Distance can only be seen working against the characters in “In the Land of Brothers,” all refugees from Afghanistan that have relocated to Iran, known as the Hazaras, after their homeland has become all but inhabitable due to the American invasion in 2001, putting down stakes in soil that they will never truly feel rooted in. However, Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi saw an opening to use the space that time can allow to their advantage in their devastating drama, constructing a shoot over the course of a year so that the seasons could change naturally to compliment the story of an immigrant family that they had in mind over the course of two decades.
“We needed to shoot one chapter and wait for a while do some pre-production to go shoot for the next one,” said Amirfazli. “Writers are always writing in their head between days, so [we] imagined what it would be if they were given a more extended period of time and the most wonderful thing that happened was that the creative people [stayed] with us throughout the pre-production and shooting, which I value most because if we lost some key creative, it would’ve have been [entirely] different.”
That is a tribute to the story that Amirfazli and Ghasemi set out to tell in “In The Land of Brothers,” a triptych shot in Iran with a cast that had personal experience with the tale they were acting out, starting with the 2001 story of a teenager (Mohammad Hosseini) who attends a trade school with the hope of building a professional career, though his hopes are stymied by local police who can treat the Afghan immigrants with impunity. He isn’t alone in feeling like a second class citizen when his friend Leila (Hamideh Jafari) can be seen a few years later in the film’s middle chapter, serving a wealthy family in order to keep a roof over the head of herself and her son when any wrong move might result in deportation. The third segment concerns Leila’s brother Qasem (Bashir Nikzad) a decade on, having a hard time accepting word that his son might’ve been radicalized and fighting in Syria as he and his wife finally are on the precipice of becoming citizens.
Having met as undergrads and coming to find they had a similar style of filmmaking as they worked on each other’s student projects, Amirfazli and Ghasemi tell a beguiling story of what unites those who feel they can’t share the totality of their personal experiences, finding characters in their debut that have to hold onto secrets that even if they aren’t divulged can become gradually toxic and after writing a tale of great sacrifice, the two now live abroad after deciding to shoot in Iran without submitting to government regulation. For all the heartbreak they capture, the duo still finds the beauty of those continuing to live on amidst trying circumstances, opening the film with the ripest red tomato you’ve ever seen and continue to locate the sparks that keep people going, whether in their relationships with loved ones or the scenery that is sometimes all they have. With “In the Land of Brothers” making its premiere at Sundance, Amirfazli and Ghasemi graciously took the time to talk about the film en route to Park City, the important role of music in the film and their filmmaking process and working with local actors to truly bring their lives to the screen.
How did this come about?
Alireza Ghasemi: It was first the story of Leila starting her journey from the beginning of her immigration until the end, but we did some rewriting and noticed that it’s not enough because we wanted to make it a story about the families who immigrated to Iran and what happened to them. We started to read a lot about Afghan war refugees in Iran because since my childhood every talks about this and it’s still a hot topic in Iranian society, and the first question [that comes up] is why do we have this repetition? For Afghan war refugees because of the bureaucratic situation in the government, the same thing happens again and again and it was important for us to show it in different characters. We have some personal connection to this society, and we read a lot about that community and we listened to a lot of podcasts and we did a lot of rewriting, so it wasn’t following one person through his or her life. It was how a system can ruin your life and ruin your family in a very specific way. We tried to separate those characters, but make it one constructed story about different characters to [express] this repetition. It’s not happening just for one person, but it happens to a community.
Is it true that many of the actors brought their lived experience to this? What was it like to cast?
Raha Amirfazli: Yes, we had a very extensive period of time for casting and for rehearsal and our casting director is also a Hazara Afghan himself and he connected us to a few people that were interested and those people connected us to their family members to their friends. We also were lucky enough to get in touch with a very small independent theater that works with Afghan refugees — people who were interested in cinema and culture and theater and used to gather every weekend to talk about books, watch movies, do some rehearsals for theaters. We saw many, many people, both from that company and from the artist community of Hazaras in Tehran and we saw a lot of people who have have actually lived the experiences of this script. It was actually a shock just how many people have gone through what we had and in the end, we chose the people who resembled of the stories [we were telling] and [could add] to characters. Rehearsing with them also helped us develop the stories into what they are right now.
What was it like to secure the locations that you did?
Raha Amirfazli: Yeah, that was a very fun part, actually. During the scouting, which was very long, Ali joined our AD and I to go to different cities simultaneously and we shared the locations that we found in a group chat. In those cities, I saw some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen in my life and it actually gave us the opportunity to see some cities that we haven’t seen before in Iran. They’re magnificent and actually doing production [there] was also a very valuable experience for me because you need to get used to the way that those cities handle production and we needed to source local crew members, so it was a very very fun experience.
There’s one particularly remarkable two-story house that you make great use of when Leila can be seen on the top level while her friends are singing below. How did you find that?
Alireza Ghasemi: The credits goes to Raha because she was the first one who took the picture when she was in the in the place and visually, it was important to show [how in the same place] you can be in different rooms with very different feelings and in that [scene], the people that are singing downstairs a very famous pre-revolutionary song and It’s a sad song about [how] you’re not young anymore and you’re in a bad situation of your life. It reminds us of the Iranian Revolution because after revolution things changed, so although they’re happy and the Leila [appears] sad up top, even the happy people in the house have their own problems and [in these] different rooms, there are different problems and you can be very close but far far away.
Raha Amirfazli: The architecture [of that house] was very Inspiring to me because I remember Ali was scouting within another city and the house was empty and didn’t have any curtains, and I could see the two stories, so I was like, “Yes, we need to have this.” If it was the other way around, [Ali] would have come up with the same shot because the house actually needed that shot.
The story might be expected to lend itself to a more drab color palette, but you use color in a really enlivening way. What was it like to think about?
Alireza Ghasemi: It was a long journey because we gathered a huge archive of pictures from different photographers and we watched a lot of films with different framing, different colors and then we involved our DOP Farshad Mohammadi, one of the most prestigious Iranian cinematographers who brought a lot to this film. When we started to discuss it with him, we started to think about what is the key characteristic of each character — what is sadness, what is anxiety, which one is more desperate, which one is more suppressed and those terms brings colors. Then we decided the second chapter is more toxic because it’s very sad and they’re having the party [downstairs], so the color is warmer [in that room]. Then we decided [a tone for] the seasons and we involved our costume designer and set designer they had a lot of very interesting ideas.
Is it true you actually started working on the music for this before shooting?
Alireza Ghasemi: We had a very amazing experience because [when we had] the first draft of the script, we sent it to Frederick and he came up with some sketches — some of them are in the film right now — and we had a lot of discussion about what we want and what we don’t and when you asked about the color of the film, it was actually part of the color of the film because we addressed the characters in the story with colors. Frederick wanted to know which one should be sad or happy or who’s the most anxious and it helped us a lot to explain this to him to have a better vision [for ourselves] It’s really hard to explain the feeling you want and he kept asking us this and it helped us understand more specific sequences of the film.
Raha Amirfazli: And Frederick came up with a few [musical] sketches that we could use on set, so each character had their own theme by that time before we went to shoot. We could play those on set for the actors to get in the mindset of those [feelings] Ali was talking about.
What’s it like to get the film to Sundance now?
Alireza Ghasemi: This is beautiful because for any directors, they want their film to be presented [to an audience] and it’s very important in the beginning that people watch this film because we have these right-wing policies everywhere and the concept of borders and of otherness are scary and whenever you read the history, after those [prior] waves, many bad things would happen. You see a lot of bad behavior in our society and some people even cannot accept that this exists. So for them to see this and to have some people try to discuss [these issues] together and maybe find a solution, that was the start of this process. We had our own personal links to the Afghan community. Raha has her own story about her encounter with one of her friends and I have my own story and I remember how I personally evolved by making this connection, so I would love this film to be watched as much as possible and to make this feeling of otherness disappear. Sundance is an amazing platform to start with.
Raha Amirfazli: Sundance is a very, very good place to showcase the film for the first time because of their support of independent films. This was truly an independent experience, making the film in Iran and we’re still experiencing the otherness that Ali is pointing out since as an Iranian, he’s still waiting for his visa to be issued to be able to come. We’re not sure how it will go, but it’s a melancholic feeling still.
Alireza Ghasemi: Yeah, three fingers crossed for me. It’s like I can feel the situation way better now.
“In the Land of Brothers” will screen again at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25th at 5:45 pm at the Broadway Centre Cinemas 6 in Salt Lake City and January 26th at 11 am at the Redstone Cinemas 1 in Park City. It will also be available to stream from January 25th through 28th.