‘Hijamat’ film review: A gay Muslim and his family face conflicts of duty and desire in an uneven drama produced by Jaafar Panahi

A family of Turks living in Berlin is divided when the bizarre sexuality of one of its younger members comes to light in the drama Cuppingthe latest serious but disappointing film from Iranian-Turkish writer-director Nader Sevar, a contender for a Crystal Globe in Karlovy Vary this year.

Much has been made of the film’s promotional materials and programming with the involvement of author Jaafar Panahi, who serves as the film’s editor and one of its three producers. It had the same credits for the Saivar 2024 feature witnessone of many collaborations between the two. (Sayvar co-wrote the recent award-winning novel Panahi It was just an accident He also participated in Panahi features 3 faces and No bears.) However, this drawn-out, sometimes issue-driven drama lacks flow, though it does have moments, including a bizarre but still compelling scene of munching on the rarely seen Nastassja Kinski as the mentally ill neighbor.

Although Sefar, like Panahi, has a reputation as a maverick within the world of Iranian cinema, where he still teaches at a Tehran university and produces films openly critical of the regime, one can’t help but wonder whether a kind of self-censorship has distorted the clarity of his narrative here. This is an especially tempting conclusion given that there are passages that fly by, not least a bravura opening scene shot as a seamless cut tracking a young boy arriving at a party as a guest of honour.

The occasion is the circumcision of a child, and as joy spreads (with separate areas for men and women) everything seems very merry until news arrives that one of the extended family members, Kerem (Gael Jim Ilhan), has been beaten. While Murad (Kida Khader Ramadan), Karam’s older brother, tries to intervene, it becomes clear that the family is angry at the pictures that have spread among them, showing Karam’s intimate relationship with a German man.

Murat and his wife Leila (Nicolette Krebitz) from Kosovo, both more open to Western ways than others in the clan, accept Kerem’s homosexuality. But this does not apply to Kerem and Murat’s father Ibrahim (Vedat Erensen), a strict family man who controls the family through tradition and money, and has achieved great success in restaurants in Berlin and back home.

In fact, even Kerem himself is so frightened that he cannot stand up to the family. He meekly goes along with it when Ibrahim drags him to the mosque where the sheikh (Aziz Kapkurt), the local cleric, pesters him into confessing his shame. But the sheikh’s motives are not entirely religious. Murad learns that he is collaborating with a businessman in his homeland who wants Ibrahim to sell a restaurant, and Sheikh uses his religious position to take advantage of the situation.

Once these different plot threads begin to cohere together into an overarching narrative, Cyvar will weave into a new bundle of plot. Some screen time is devoted to the breakdown of Margot (Kinski), a friend of Murad’s late mother who lives across the street from Ibrahim, and is still troubled by her experience trying to escape to West Berlin from the East years ago. The subplot serves to remind us how the city has been a refuge for immigrants of all kinds for years and that the trauma of violent escape reverberates through the generations, but it never satisfactorily threads itself into the main body of the drama.

Likewise, the final implication that Murad himself is tormented by feelings of attraction toward men is awkwardly inserted and not particularly convincing. But this revelation at least allows for the appearance of another German movie star: Moritz Bleibtreu as a New Age therapist in a silly wig and headband, who offers to fix Murad with some cupping therapy, also known as cupping — hence the film’s title.