By: Malasha Parker
In the Clouds is a tragic, concisely authentic one of a kind experience showcasing an immigrant family dealing with grief in their own individual ways. At different levels of grief, a family is seen navigating through life as Iranian refugees trying to deal with a world that keeps going around them. This short film highlights what refugee families may be going through way more than what the surface level emotions offer. Director Alexandra Bahíyyih Wain’s film In the Clouds is an exquisite and solemn insight into migrant families displaced into areas where they have to continue to adapt. No matter the battles they have already endured, more hardships are in the unknown environments that they will encounter on an every day basis.
In low, cool-toned blue lighting, Sara (Nika Roufi) asks her mom (Raha Rahbari) if she can go play. Her mother is cooking and answers Sara by yelling at her. Sara doesn’t visually react with any outward display of emotions at this moment. Then, her father (Reza Shademan) comes around the corner with a calm manner. He asks his wife to take a break from cooking while he finishes, but she continues to move along as if he isn’t speaking so he reluctantly leaves to take the trash out. When Sara never receives an answer from her mom, she departs to go play in her room. After coloring, she goes back to the kitchen to check on her mother. She hears someone calling her name outside the door and opens it to see her friend Tala (Sophia Akraminejad), who wants to go play around their apartment complex. Sara says she needs to ask her mom, but Tala believes that she will only say no like she always does. As the girls walk around the building they encounter a few people. One is an older lady (Sara Kunz) who assumes Sara doesn’t know what an orange is. Sara tries to hand the woman an orange that she dropped, but the lady begins to degradingly ask her to say the word “orange” in English. When Sara only stares back at her, the woman gets upset and enters her apartment with a huff.
Sara and Tala continue to play around the building floors even encountering a group of boys picking on an older man, Derek (Kevin Layne). Tala and Sara make their way to the swingsets behind the apartments where the two swing and talk. The audience sees flashes of an incident in the water where Sara’s parents are screaming for her and Tala. In the present, Sara’s parents are looking for her as well wondering where she has wandered off to. They find her on the swings and ask why she would run off like that. She explains that she was playing with Tala, but actually Tala is not there. She shows her parents the bird that the boys were messing with and tells them it is in the clouds now…with Tala. Her parents solemnly look at her and tell her not to run off again. They sadly smile and go back home.
In the Clouds is one of the most subtly visceral films of the year. As the movie gradually moves through, you begin to realize what is happening as Tala disappears and reappears when no one but Sara is around. The actors do a phenomenal job with the material and Wain’s directorial decisions make the film shine in a way that is both sad and beautiful.
The short film In the Clouds highlights the realities behind immigration and grief. We should not judge a book by its cover and we should treat one another as equals. This is a film that needs to be seen by many and is sure to make people look deeper at those different from them.