Director: Mira Alkadri
Cast: Nanda Mohammad, Bissane Al Charif
Running time: 5mins
For some of us, there are very few things more intensely uncomfortable than making and maintaining eye-contact. Of course, there are many reasons why that might be the case, including past trauma, or medical conditions – but there are also some psycho-social issues at play. More and more, we have become siloed as individuals, living separate and atomised lives amid seas of other human beings.
Through the increasingly atomised lens of the last four decades, we have been reprogrammed as supreme units of individuality. That is both a result of and necessary for the existance of consumer economics; we must each be a tiny singular unit which can be sold the same services as all our neighbours, friends and family. At the same time, this has taught us to dread communal aspects of life – the areas we would previously have come together and have to find ways to get along, from health and fitness, to transport, culture and politics – making it both easier to sell once-collectivised necessities back to us as less effective private services, and to hook us with increasingly fascistic ideological projects.
Part of the timely beauty of Mira Alkadri’s Up close is that it takes place aboard Paris’ crowded metro system, and was filmed at a time when the country’s fascists were in the ascendancy. And yet, through its simple-yet-effective cinematic signifiers, it delivers a resoundingly hopeful riposte to their hatred – a riposte which has since been echoed by the results of France’s parliamentary election.
The film centres on that now most terrifying facets of modern life – accidentally making eye-contact with a stranger. Nanda Mohammad finds herself opposite Bissane Al Charif aboard a busy train, and horror upon horror, they catch each other glancing at the figure opposite. It almost feels confrontational at first, and the demeanour of both women sours in that split second. We stew with them for a moment, wondering what insufferable encounter might be about to occur, what kind of evil they each might have just invited into their lives, or what extremes would be permissible to re-assert the divide between them.
They initially try to bat the moment off as just a silly little social ill, flashing apologetic smiles at their counterpart, desperately scrambling to return to that microcosm where they could just stare into the void and go about their daily duties as workers or consumers. But that isn’t possible. The illusion has shattered. Suddenly, the pair are forced to reckon with just who they are, and how they relate to each other – outsourcing their feelings, and maintaining every other figure they encounter is some distant statistic is off the table now.
So, the more time that passes, the more their eyes are drawn to the other. Collective life is back with a bang – as it is on the political agenda of France and Europe as a whole – and the pair sit at the cross-roads. There is a brand of barbarism which could help them reassert the otherness of their opposite number, and promise to return them to their comfortable lives of isolation via something supremely ugly (and for a second, the angry expressions suggest this is very much on the cards). Or there is an alternative in which they open themselves up to the feelings and needs of others again, and dare to believe there could be a collective worth rebuilding together.
Both Mohammad and Al Charif sit squarely in the middle of the frame now, gazing intensely into the lens. Our simian brains panic. Is this a threat display, or a fleeting moment of peaceful intimacy?
As tears begin to stream down both faces, the pair break into relieved grins. Alkadri’s film transports them to a leafy state of nature, where the pair bask in each other’s awareness – the feeling that they do not in fact have to be alone, or fearful of any human interaction. And in different moments, the actors are supplanted by other faces, a diverse array of people who might similarly have been distanced and disparaged in pursuit of that earlier, fatal individualism – that construct that has been shattered by this interaction. In this context, the cinematography of Matties Dielemans shines brightly. He leverages a kind of portrait photography I instinctively associate with The Motorcycle Diaries – finding a way to reflect someone not just as an item of interest, but as a living, breathing equal – in the blink of an eye.
And of course, there are the lead actors. The power of the wordless performances from Mohammad and Al Charif cannot be understated. They run the emotional gamut in just four minutes, without ever threatening to become overwrought or exaggerated. And being able to cry on cue is something which is also worthy of note, because it often requires actors to tap into deep wells of raw emotion – and revisit the saddest or most volatile moments of their lives – for the sake of art. We should be thankful that they were both willing to go there to make such a wonderful work come to life.
In the concluding moments of the film, the journey comes to an end, and the travellers depart. But they are changed by this experience – and their worlds have become a world – converging with the former bubbles of many more unknown but suddenly understandable human beings, and suggesting that a kinder, gentler world is still possible.
This is a phenomenal work from Mira Alkadri, who bills herself as a first-time student filmmaker. I don’t doubt there were a few smaller experiments before this complete finished product emerged – but still, that is a remarkable achievement – and I look forward to introducing her work to audiences at IFL’s 2025 Amsterdam showcase.