Set in Norway, one of the happiest countries in the world with the highest living standards, A Happy Day is a visually stunning and poignantly poetic story about refugee teenagers who are to be returned to their home countries on the day they turn 18.
It’s a happy day, and a day to “celebrate” that they all dread.
What constitutes true cinema? Is it a well-developed and complex story? Technically impeccable execution? Talented actors and charismatic or socially important characters? Meticulously written dialogues?
To be recognized, sometimes it’s enough for the film to have just one of those. Yet A Happy Day masterfully combines all these cinematic tools, together with colors, sounds, metaphors, and poetry. It reminds us that a good story is not everything, and that there is a magic beyond the narrative that can only be revealed through the means of cinema.
This is one of those stories that cannot be expressed in words. it must be watched and appreciated in its audiovisual complexity. It is a story that charmed all three FIPRESCI jurors with very different backgrounds, and we unanimously decided to award this film as a critic’s choice in the Kurdish features competition.
Yet among my colleagues, I was impacted by A Happy Day the most, as I was the youngest, a refugee, and living in Scandinavia. Nordic countries are often considered to be one of the most desired destinations for a refugee. Yet the reality one faces there while asking for asylum is not as bright as could be hoped for. A long and exhausting bureaucratic process, as well as ever-changing migration regulations, leave you in unnerving uncertainty that drains the joy out of you.
As well, adapting to climate conditions will clearly have an impact on the mental state of asylum seeker. Generously provided language courses, with the best of intentions, will mercilessly refer to your past, asking to publicly tell what you miss most about home, thus making you relive disturbing trauma that is only too fresh.
Yet it is all still worth going through to get a chance to start anew in this blessed, calm land with an alien and poetic landscape that leaves enough physical space for existence (something that most refugees lack) and mental space for self-reflection and recovery.
In A Happy Day, director Hisham Zaman chooses to set his story in the peculiar liminal space in the middle of a snowy desert, which perfectly reflects the state of people who lost their past and are uncertain about their future. There is no way out, but staying put while waiting for the impending doom of extradition is a torture worse than dying while trying to escape. Brought by fate to this secluded refugee center, all of them survivors of different conflicts, the teenage characters of A Happy Day are united by the common goal of fighting for a chance in life.
While deciding on a winner, we debated if this film could truly be qualified for Kurdish competition, compared to films made in Kurdistan and explicitly dealing with very tangible local reality. Yet eventually, we couldn’t resist the powerful poetics of cinema, where the personal dramatic experience of the director of Kurdish origin imposed itself on the local story. He unites the pains and hopes of all those struggling for a home and battling for the dignified life that every human being deserves, regardless of origin.
A Happy Day reminded me of the FIPRESCI winner of the 42nd Cairo Film Festival, Limbo by Ben Sharrock.
In 2020, I was deeply moved by this film. And though back then I was already a byproduct of the war and had a status of “displaced person,” little did I know that two years later I would become a refugee and face the exact reality, feelings, and battles that characters of both movies are dealing with.
Much as with the main character of A Happy Day (with its convincing performance by Salah Qadi), the inner poetry helps me to process the unbearable absurdity of reality. Poetry, humor and the ability to love: those are the artistic components so gently and tactfully selected by Hisham Zaman to express the ongoing conflict that for too many refugees, will have no resolution.
My refugee residency permit expires in March of 2025 (it can be reapplied for, and prolonged after an investigation of sufficient grounds for an extension). And watching the film, I couldn’t help but wonder if my “happy day” would come, and if so, what would come after?
Is there hope for any of those running from pain? What’s lying behind the vastness of the snowy desert? The director gives us no certain answers.
Will we be able to find them ourselves and end the struggle?
Elena Rubashevska
Edited by Jim Slotek
© FIPRESCI 2024