Presented in a world premiere at CPH:DOX in the DOX:AWARD section, Immortals, the second feature film from Swiss director Maja Tschumi, is built around the hopes and broken dreams, but most of all the tenacity, of young people who cannot accept to live in the margins of an oppressive and uncompromising society to which they do not feel they belong. The faces of this exhausted but combative generation are Milo (Melak Mahdi), a young activist who, in order to walk the street of Baghdad without being seen, has decided to wear her brother’s clothes, and Khalili (Mohammed Al Khalili), a photographer and filmmaker who has bravely documented the violence that marked the protest movement of 2019. Thanks to the subtle and elegant use of archive images (mostly Khalili’s) and reenactments offered with great empathy to the viewers, Maja Tschumi weaves together a powerful narrative which, despite the pain it contains, gives a profound sense of hope. 

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Divided into three chapters — “the hidden battles,” whose main protagonist is Milo; “the clashes,” assembled from Khalili’s images; and “the decisions,” which shows reality as seen by the two protagonists — Immortals captures and communicates the emotions of the many who, after the 2019 revolution, dared to hope for a better and fairer future. Although the film focuses on Milo and Khalili, we very quickly realise how much the emotions which animate them, from excitement to profound disillusionment, are shared by many more young people throughout the world, all forced to endure the violence of repressive contexts that refuse all dialogue. 

When, with a calm yet deep voice, Milo talks about being confined to the family home for an entire year for participating in the protests in 2019, it’s impossible not to be shocked. Her choice to wear her brother’s clothes or rather to “behave like a man” in order not to be spotted makes us understand just to what degree the society in which she lives is built on segregating and stigmatising social constructs. In the same way, Khalili tries near the end of the film to meet the expectations of his society and family, without succeeding. Abandoning his camera would mean abandoning his very being, becoming a shadow among the shadows. Despite the coldness of a government insensitive to the pain of the weakest, the tenderness with which these proud and scared young people take care of one another encourages us to hope that, despite it all, not everything is yet lost.

Precise yet never repetitive, Immortals is a dystopian film that turns into an ode to fragility, and it shows the contrasting feelings of those who allowed themselves the luxury of hoping that David might kill Goliath. Although it is impossible to predict what the future holds for them, Milo and Khalili become, for the duration of a film, the protagonists of their own lives.

Immortals was produced by Filmgerberei GmbH, SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen and Rola Productions, and is sold internationally by CAT&Docs.