The democratizing power of technology gives everyone the tools and platform to be heard. It has, at times, worked miracles — many claim Twitter and Facebook were integral in coordinating the Arab Spring, while the ubiquity of smartphones has allowed the documentation of human rights violations committed by dictators around the world (and in Syria in particular). But, it could be argued, these same technologies have done nothing to affirm the agency and humanity of those from marginalized and oppressed countries — their photos and videos are co-opted by international media organizations (both those friendly and hostile) who use them to create their own narratives (both those truthful and not), and Facebook and Twitter do what they do to harvest data and sell ads.
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This messy dynamic is one reason the new documentary “Midnight Traveler,” which premiered recently at Sundance, is so refreshing. With “Midnight Traveler,” Afghan filmmaker Hassan Fazili, alongside his wife Fatima Hussaini, uses technology in a desperate and tenacious attempt to reclaim his family’s agency after they are forced to flee Afghanistan and make the illegal and perilous journey to Europe.
From the beginning, “Midnight Traveler” posits that the journey of a refugee is a continuous stripping of agency and control. In 2015, Fazili and his family were forced to flee after the Taliban murdered the subject of one of his films and put a price on his head. The decision to leave their homes and make the 3,000-plus mile trek to Europe was not their own. From that point forward, time and again, their fate — and, in so many ways, their humanity — is in the hands of others: smugglers, border agents, and the cumbersome bureaucracy of the European Union. Fazili and Hussaini’s choice to continuously capture everything on their phones, and to then turn that footage into a narrative — their narrative — is an attempt to reclaim what little agency over their own fate as they can.
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What makes “Midnight Traveler” so moving, though, is the portrait that Fazili and Hussaini paint of both themselves as full, ungainly people, with flaws and hopes and perfections, and their daughters, who, in a way, are the stars of “Midnight Traveler.” From the very beginning, it is an honest film. While never boring, ‘Traveler’ is necessarily tedious. Of the three years spent migrating, hundreds of days were spent waiting in refugee camps in Bulgaria, Serbia and finally, painfully, in a transit zone in Hungary that they are not allowed to leave.
But stuck in limbo are two young girls, Nargis and Zahra, who both suffer and flourish in the confines. Though “flourish” feels like the wrong word for their circumstances because the truth is they spent three years fleeing violence and death only to be corralled in tiny, unsanitary rooms and told to wait for months, for years, while some bureaucrat somewhere decides if the danger they faced was credible. Still, the film revels in the boundless energy of Nargis and Zahra, who’s spirits seem invincible until, the family sequestered once again in prison-like camp, contemplative Nargis explains how she will try to forget everything about these long years.
Formally, “Midnight Traveler” is a languid, poetic film. There are no beats, yet the pacing never slogs. It uses the long spans of time when the family is stuck at one camp or another to turn reflective. Through narration and pleasantly messy tête-à-têtes, Fazili and Hussaini meditate on family, fear, equality, Islam, and the banality of everyday life. Throughout, though, it is hard not to forget that “Midnight Traveler” is a film of life or death, which Gretchen Jude’s score constantly reminds, and which infuses tension into the narrative’s nooks and crannies.
What “Midnight Traveler” lacks in technical proficiency, it makes up for in humble ambition. It does not set out to tell The Refugee story, nor does it shoehorn statistics in about violence in Afghanistan or families forced from their homes — all of which have their place and deserve to be explored and not forgotten, of course. “Midnight Traveler,” rather, is a film about a family, about the hardship and inhumanity they have endured, about their bravery, about their love, about their hope, and, above all else, about their desire to be safe and in control of their lives and bodies and destinies and fates. [A-]
Check out all our coverage from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival here.