IN SEARCH OF SUPERMAN

By Adam Zacharias

12-12-2012

 

DIRECTOR KARZAN KADER´S debut film, the Kurdish-language Bekas, is drawn from his all-too-real experiences as a child trying to flee war-torn Iraq in the early 1990s.

Kader and his family endured a gruelling and dangerous journey to finally settle in Sweden. Now 30 years old, the graduate of Stockholm film school Dramatiska Institutet has brought his movie to the Dubai International Film Festival. The 92-minute story had its international premiere at the Madinat Arena on Monday night.

 

Bekas, which in Kurdish loosely translates to ‘extreme loneliness´, follows two homeless and orphaned young boys, Dana and Zana. The intrepid duo decide that they´d like to start afresh in America, where they hope to meet Superman, and set out on their donkey in search of a better life.

We sat down with Karzan to hear his fascinating story and how he ended up adapting it for the silver screen.

What was the final straw for your family before you all fled Iraq for good?


We had to escape - we lost a lot of family members. We had relatives who escaped to America before us, so it came very naturally. We couldn´t handle the war anymore, and we were really afraid we would be killed, so we escaped and ended up in Sweden. I was between seven and eight years old.

How much did your parents protect you from the terror that surrounded you?


Most of the time, my parents and sisters were in another car with the smugglers, while my brother and I were in a different car. We were taking care of one another all the time, me and my brother, and most of the situations you see in the film happened to us, except it was in a car rather than on a donkey.

 

When you were being smuggled from Iraq to Sweden, how did you hide?


Some of the time we were in the back seat of a car, sometimes we were on buses, sometimes in trains - but we were hiding all the time. We travelled through a lot of countries. We never took an aeroplane, so it was an 11-month trip in total from Kurdistan to Sweden.

When did it first occur to you to make a film based on your experiences?


I was thinking all the time about what happened to me and my brother, and sometimes I´d start to cry thinking about what happened. I needed to tell someone -  I couldn´t just sit and talk to my parents, because they knew all about it too. They had been through worse so I couldn´t touch them with my stories. One day, I was interested in this girl, who was interested in another guy who wrote books. I thought, “If he´s writing books I´ll make a film - that´ll really impress her!” But it never happened with her, although I found my love of cinema through a short film, and then I began to make more advanced stories. Finally I ended up at this film school.

Why does Superman feature so prominently in the boys´ imaginations?


I remember seeing Rambo for the first time, and I was thinking, “We´re in the middle of the war. This guy is brave, he has muscles and he stands up against an army by himself. We need this guy here, where is he?” That was my mission - to bring Rambo back to Kurdistan.

So why not have the lads dreaming of befriending Rambo?


Superman is so much easier to explain, it´s more commercial and everybody knows him. The beautiful part of it is that the boys can add stuff to Superman, like he´s so powerful that he will bring their dead parents back to life just by the touch of his finger. That´s the naïve side of a kid´s point of view, that Superman can do anything, and that´s very beautiful.

Why was the dream destination transferred in the film from Sweden to America?


Because in Kurdistan, everyone wants to get to America and everyone talks about it. When I was a kid, I was thinking why does everyone want to get there? When I saw Rambo, I understood. It felt very natural to have that in the film, and I´ve had thousands of letters from Kurds saying they had the same thoughts about America. It´s amazing.

Do you still harbour dreams to go to America, but now as a director? Perhaps you could direct a superhero movie yourself...


Why not - I would love to do that, but only when I have a script that I believe in. Today, I´m getting scripts but I´m not satisfied with them. I´ll take my time, because I respect filmmaking a lot. I won´t just make a film because I can go to Hollywood.

How has Sweden treated you and your family since you moved there all those years ago?


Wonderfully. When I came to Sweden I had nothing. I didn´t know the language, I didn´t know anybody, and today Sweden has given me so much. I have friends, I have work and I have a future. I didn´t have that when I got there. It was harder for my parents, as they were older - they had no job, no money, but they took care of us. They are my superheroes.