Silence Is the Loudest Thing in the Room

Read Time:5 Minute, 9 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Magid / Zafar
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Genre: Drama, Short
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 18m
Director(s): Luís Hindman
Writer(s): Luís Hindman, Sufiyaan Salam
Cast: Eben Figueiredo, Gurjeet Singh, Kulvinder Ghir, Ravin J. Ganatra
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 BFI London Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: What happens when the person who knows you best is also the one you’ve actively been avoiding? MAGID / ZAFAR chases this question with relentless intensity, turning it into a pressure cooker for identity, masculinity, and emotional avoidance. In just eighteen minutes, director Luís Hindman delivers one of the most viscerally direct British shorts in recent years, a film that doesn’t just depict tension but manufactures it moment by moment until escape feels impossible.

Set over the course of a single sweltering night, the film follows Magid as he works through the chaos of a busy kitchen, surrounded by clanking pans, screaming, and bodies packed too tightly into too little space. The arrival of Zafar, a childhood friend whose presence carries unresolved history, instantly shifts everything. What begins as merely discomfort escalates into something far more personal, the past asserting itself with every glance, half-finished sentence, and forced smile.

Hindman’s direction is striking for its refusal to stylize suffering. The takeaway isn’t romanticized or exaggerated. It’s loud, cramped, fluorescent, and exhausting in ways that feel immediately recognizable. Cinematography by Jaime Ackroyd mirrors Magid’s internal state, staying close, restless, and reactive. The camera doesn’t observe from a distance; it crowds the characters, trapping them in frames that feel increasingly suffocating as the night wears on.

Eben Figueiredo delivers a remarkable performance as Magid, grounding the film with a portrayal that balances bravado and vulnerability without ever tipping into cliché. Magid presents himself as sharp, capable, and in control, but the performance allows small fractures to surface. His confidence feels practiced rather than innate, a defense mechanism built over time. Figueiredo lets those defenses slip gradually, often through silence rather than dialogue, making the character’s emotional unraveling feel earned.

Opposite him, Gurjeet Singh’s Zafar is quieter but no less impactful. Where Magid fills space with noise and movement, Zafar occupies it with restraint. Singh plays him as someone who’s already accepted certain truths, even if he hasn’t said them out loud. The chemistry between the two actors carries the film, communicating years of shared history through body language alone. Their interactions feel intimate without becoming sentimental, charged without becoming performative.

The film interrogates South Asian masculinity with specificity and care, exploring how cultural expectations, loyalty, and emotional repression intersect. The screenplay, co-written by Hindman and Sufiyaan Salam, avoids exposition-heavy dialogue in favor of implication. Conversations circle what matters most without naming it, reflecting how these men have been taught to communicate, or not communicate, at all.

Sound design plays a crucial role in shaping the experience. The kitchen noise is relentless at first, overlapping voices and machinery creating a constant sensory assault. As the film progresses, Hindman strategically pares back that noise, allowing moments of near silence to land with devastating force. Music choices that blend contemporary Asian hip-hop with traditional Pakistani influences reinforce the film’s exploration of cultural duality, with old and new coexisting uneasily.

The supporting cast adds without distraction. Kulvinder Ghir brings command and weary pragmatism to Bilal, embodying a generation that has learned survival through endurance rather than introspection. The surrounding characters, from family members to football fans, aren’t caricatures; they’re reminders of the social environment pressing in on Magid from all sides. The takeaway becomes not just a workplace, but a microcosm of inherited expectations.

If there’s a critique to be made, it’s that the film’s intensity may feel overwhelming to some viewers, particularly those unfamiliar with the cultural context. MAGID / ZAFAR doesn’t pause to explain itself, nor should it. Its power lies in that refusal. The film trusts the audience to keep up, to read between the lines, and to sit with discomfort rather than resolve it.

That trust has paid off. The film’s reception, including a win at the British Independent Film Awards, a BAFTA nomination, and high-profile selections at both BFI London Film Festival and Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, reflects its impact not just as a statement, but as a work of cinema that understands form as deeply as content.

By the time the film reaches its final moments, there’s no cathartic release in the traditional sense. Instead, there’s recognition. Of choices made. Of words withheld. Of futures diverging, whether anyone is ready or not. MAGID / ZAFAR doesn’t offer solutions, but it does something more difficult. It tells the truth as cleanly and urgently as possible, then steps aside.

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[photo courtesy of BFI FILM FUND, BFI FILMS, BFI NETWORK, BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE (BFI), LOVECHILD, LUÍS HINDMAN]

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