A man races for his life across in the Turkey-Bulgaria border in this tense and visceral fact-based drama.
Haider Rashid’s near-wordless film opens with text that highlights the dangers faced by refugees leaving Iraq in search of a safe home, but instead encounter brutal law enforcement officials and a nationalist militias who hunt them down. British Libyan actor Adam Ali plays Kamal, one of these refugees. After escaping the violence of a human trafficker, Kamal finds himself pursued by ‘migrant hunters’. It’s a life or death chase and Kamal has only his wits to seek safe haven.
Filmed mostly in close-up and never straying to far from Kamal’s side, Rashid’s film echoes the classic sci-fi story ‘_The Most Dangerous Game_’ and Jerzy Skolimowski’s taut 2010 thriller Essential Killing. Ali is excellent, his performance a combination of physical dexterity and raw emotion as Kamal desperately attempts to evade the gangs who have no idea of his past and the pain he has suffered, but seem hell bent on denying him a future.
