Copilot movie review (2021) | Little White Lies

Copi­lot

08 Sep 2021 / Released: 10 Sep 2021

Woman in a dark grey top standing outdoors with eyes closed.
Woman in a dark grey top standing outdoors with eyes closed.
3

Anticipation.

Arrives on these shores on the back of an impressive festival run.

4

Enjoyment.

Canan Kir gives a beautiful performance within a well-crafted narrative of impending loss.

4

In Retrospect.

A lyrical exploration of a woman’s emotional endurance.

Anne Zohra Berrached’s 90s-set romance fic­tion­alis­es the pri­vate life of Unit­ed 93 hijack­er Ziad Jar­rah and his lover.

Set in Ham­burg in the mid-’90s over the course of five years, Anne Zohra Berrached’s Copi­lot is a fic­tion­alised account of the tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship between bright Turk­ish sci­ence stu­dent Asli (Canan Kir) and the charis­mat­ic and con­fi­dent Saeed (Roger Azar) from Lebanon, whose dream is to become a pilot. The focus of the film lies in Asli’s per­se­ver­ance: her true and sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence; her vis­cer­al out­bursts and moments of sup­press­ing her emotions.

The camera’s inti­ma­cy breaks with the film’s real­ism through var­i­ous poet­ic and dream­like devices used to por­tray Asli’s inner con­flict. Mov­ing to a flat in a red light dis­trict, a con­stant and inva­sive blue-red light glar­ing­ly flash­es into her room, enhanc­ing her ever increas­ing rest­less­ness. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy evokes an emo­tion­al recre­ation of the era, with the film’s poet­ic sequences being enriched by Evgueni and Sacha Galperine’s cap­ti­vat­ing score.

By the third year of their rela­tion­ship, Saeed spends more and more time with his Arab friends dis­cussing what’s con­sid­ered haram (for­bid­den) and makruh (dis­ap­proved), before going off to Yemen for a few months. His response to, Why are you off to Yemen?”, being a mere and unsat­is­fac­to­ry, Trust me”.

At this point, as a view­er, you’re frus­trat­ed. You want to urge Asli to demand answers, to insist on suf­fi­cient expla­na­tions, to ask ques­tions, to eman­ci­pate her­self from this unfair emo­tion­al tur­moil, even if it comes at a cost.

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