Intimacy Forged Through Unspoken Wounds

Read Time:5 Minute, 37 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Paikar
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Genre: Documentary
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director(s): Dawood Hilmandi
Where to Watch: shown at IDFA 2025

RAVING REVIEW: PAIKAR begins with a confrontation—one that has lived in the filmmaker’s body for years. Dawood Hilmandi returns to the world he left behind to face the man whose silence shaped him, and in doing so, the film becomes an exploration of everything exile fails to erase. The title, a family nickname meaning “war” or “warrior,” mirrors the story's tone. It speaks to the cultural and emotional armor passed down through generations, the kind that grows heavier the longer it goes unexamined. The documentary moves with the patience of someone trying to understand the parts of himself that were inherited rather than chosen.

This homecoming isn’t romanticized. Hilmandi isn’t returning to reclaim an idyllic childhood, but to navigate the scars it left behind. His father—once a mujahideen fighter, later an imam, writer, and poet—is a man hardened by ideology, loss, and survival. A complicated mixture of reverence, distance, and unresolved questions marks their relationship. The film reframes this dynamic not as a perfect arc toward reconciliation, but as a difficult attempt at connection between two people shaped by the same history in completely different ways. What emerges is a story built on honesty, where closeness and conflict often coexist.

One of the strongest elements of PAIKAR is how it defines “home” not as a return but as a search for clarity. Hilmandi travels through Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, retracing the pathways of his father’s life. These landscapes carry a quiet power, reflecting the political and spiritual transformations that shaped Baba long before Dawood was born. The film allows these environments to exist without commentary, trusting viewers to feel the weight of the family’s history through its presence. The movement from one country to another underscores the instability that defined their lives and pushed Hilmandi toward a new identity in the Netherlands.

The documentary becomes most compelling when Dawood and his father simply occupy the same space—watching television, visiting the mosque, sharing meals that carry the burden of unspoken years. These moments reveal the complexity of closeness after estrangement. The father is not portrayed as a caricature of severity; instead, the film acknowledges the inner world he rarely articulates. His past as a fighter, his evolution into a religious leader, and his poetic sensibilities form a layered portrait of a man who never learned how to express vulnerability, even when it lived beneath his surface. Hilmandi captures this contradiction with empathy rather than accusation.

PAIKAR’s impact grows through its willingness to sit with discomfort. Dawood does not force his father to reveal anything. The film understands that some truths arrive quietly, and some never arrive at all. Instead, it examines the inherited silence that can define immigrant and refugee families—the kind that stretches across borders and generations. Dawood’s questions about identity, belonging, and spiritual freedom resonate because they reflect a personal crisis shared by many who grow up negotiating multiple cultures while carrying a history that preceded them.

What sets this documentary apart is its refusal to frame trauma as a narrative. The film acknowledges loss, violence, and exile, but never sensationalizes them. These experiences are part of the family’s reality, not material for melodrama. Hilmandi allows the audience to witness how these wounds shape the emotion of a father and son who rarely speak openly about their pain. The director’s own vulnerability—his desire for understanding, his longing for recognition—becomes a vital part of the story without overshadowing the broader context of war, displacement, and generational fracture.

The film’s reflective nature extends to its structure. Rather than relying on traditional documentary style, PAIKAR evolves through conversation, memory, and the tension between what is said and what is withheld. It creates a momentum rooted in introspection. This approach may feel understated compared to more conventional storytelling, but it aligns beautifully with the film’s core. The slow unfolding mirrors the real experience of trying to understand someone who has spent a lifetime withholding their inner world. The payoff is subtle yet meaningful, offering moments where connection flickers unexpectedly between Dawood and his father.

What remains long after the film ends is the recognition that healing does not always involve closure. Sometimes healing is the act of finally asking a question that has lived in the back of your mind since childhood. Sometimes it’s learning that a parent’s silence came from their own buried suffering. Sometimes it’s realizing that the relationship will never be easy, but it can still be meaningful. PAIKAR leans into that unresolved emotional space, offering viewers something far more authentic than a neatly resolved ending.

PAIKAR succeeds because it is grounded in truth—messy, painful, and deeply human. It does not try to universalize its story, yet it becomes universal by accident through its honesty. Anyone who has carried inherited wounds, navigated complex family dynamics, or felt both connected to and distant from their cultural roots will find pieces of themselves in Dawood’s journey. The film’s strength lies not in its statements but in its questions, and in its quiet insistence that even the hardest hearts may still hold room for tenderness if given the chance to be seen.

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[photo courtesy of BALDR FILM]

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