Jirga

A remarkable truthfulness shepherds Benjamin Gilmour’s tightly written and conscientiously produced drama Jirga as it renders an image of Afghanistan not as a ravaged battleground but as an arrestingly rich land.

This very fine film has a way of pulling you towards its wavelength.

Jirga is not going for subtlety. Its heavy-handed message about guilt, responsibility, and forgiveness is outright stated to the audience. It’s very idealistic, and you might not buy it. But you will remember the experience of having your eyes opened to a new part of the world.

Despite the performance’s credibility, few things are more irritating, artistically and historically, than the stranger-in-a-strange-land interloper who hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing.

As interesting as all this is, and as challenging and perilous it must have been to capture these images, Jirga’s elliptical approach to plot and selective use of subtitles does the finished product no favors.

Skirting the line between documentary and fiction in a manner reminiscent of the Jalalabad-based Aussie filmmaker George Gittoes (thanked in the credits), the filmmaking could most charitably be described as artless, with a medley of shaky thousand-pixel close-ups providing a sense of detail that doesn't quite extend to the script.