THE SWALLOWS of KABUL for the Strength of Its Subject and Its Artistic Impetus

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ARTISTERY on display...... fans of adult theme animation will seek the film out (Screen International)

Graphically RICH...dramatically and poetically RIGHT (Variety)

This film threads an UNDYING HOPE for the future through every shade of its tragedy and sacrifice (Roger Ebert.com)

VISUALLY arresting and emotionally engaging (Eye for Film)

2 Engaging and captivating (Cinefilos)

Not to be missed (Taxidrivers)

A VISUAL cinematic POEM (EFE Agency)

Ultimately TOUCHING...BEAUTIFUL watercolor-like animation (Film Companion)

An animated JEWEL (RTVE)

If animation can, through the lightness of the drawing line and touches of color, evoke the intimate and the universal while revealing the forbidden, then we want to reward THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL for the strength of its subject and its artistic impetus. (DOMINIQUE HOFF, GENERAL DELEGATE OF THE GAN FOUNDATION)

PRESS COVERAGE

May 16th, 2019 Alissa Simon,

Cannes Film Review: ‘The Swallows of KABUL’ Two female directors co-sign this involving adaptation of Yasmina Khadra’s elegant literary fiction ABOUT life UNDER Taliban control in the Afghan capital.

The long-awaited, graphically rich, 2D watercolor-style animation “The Swallows Of Kabul” from French helmers Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec provides an involving adaptation of Yasmina Khadra’s elegant literary fiction. The book, an international bestseller about life under Taliban control in the Afghan capital, highlighted a dangerous act of humanity during a grim and violent time via the stories of two couples whose fates become intertwined through death, imprisonment, and remarkable self-sacrifice. This supplies the core plot of the film, with the action condensed into a tight 81 minutes. Purists may object that the prestige production takes some liberties with novel, but on the whole, the inventions by screenplay writers Sébastien Tavel, Patricia Mortagne, and co-helmer Breitman feel dramatically and poetically right.

The action unfolds in 1998 (as opposed to the novel’s 2001), shortly after the fundamentalist Taliban have come to power. Historian Mohsen (voiced by Swann Arlaud) and artist Zunaira (Zita Hanrot) are still young and in love. They remain hopeful that they will once again be able to live as they choose in their beloved country. In contrast, the despair-filled prison warden Atiq (Simon Abkarian) and his terminally-ill wife Mussarat (Hiam Abbass) live as if they are already dead. Stoic war vet Atiq has seen too much horror in his life and is unable to express to his wife how much she means to him. She, meanwhile, suffers because she can’t fulfill her wifely functions of shopping, cleaning, and cooking, and because she never bore him a child. It’s the characterization of Mussarat that winds up being the most slighted from the condensing of the novel.

May 16th, 2019 Alissa Simon,

Spoiler alert for those who haven’t already read the novel: Zunaira winds up in Atiq’s prison, condemned to death for murder. For the Taliban, the opportunity to execute a woman called for special pomp and ceremony, which the film depicts in chilling scenes. Whether it is the faceless, burqa-clad prostitutes stoned to death by crowds after a sermon by a ranting mullah or those kneeling unfortunates blasted in the back of their heads by a Kalashnikov in a soccer stadium full of VIPs, these scenes may be distanced by the drawings, but are still very difficult to watch.

Co-director Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec, who is also responsible for the overall character and graphic design, earned her stripes as an animator on popular French features such as “Ernest and Celestine” and “The Rabbi’s Cat.” In a way, the delicate aquarelle graphics have a taste of the former, even while evoking a derelict, war-devastated city where turban-clad men race around in Toyota pickups, whipping pedestrians and firing guns simply because they have the power to do so.

As a medium, animation suits this adaptation well; it would have been nearly impossible to shoot as live fiction or on location. Here the drawings communicate quickly what took several pages of description and dialogue to express in the novel, whether it is Mohsen’s memories of better days at the cinema shown as a time-lapse sequence of hand-holding couples in Western clothes or Atiq’s merciless Taliban superior Qassim (Sébastien Pouderoux), as he lolls in a brothel, his long legs pinioning the young girl he is holding on to. Particularly striking are various subjective shots from behind the eye-screen of a burqa, and a climactic scene, in which a man peers into that mesh barrier from the other side, trying to find his wife’s eyes

Marking her fifth feature as director, Breitman, who is also a popular actress and director of television and theater, decided to capture her voice cast during live performance rather than simply as voices standing at a mic. This approach lends extra authenticity to the sound and rhythms of the acting, which will be more difficult to replicate if sold to other territories where dubbing is common. Breitman’s father, Jean-Claude Deret, is especially poignant as an elderly former mullah who despairs of the direction his country is taking.

In addition to the standout work done by a large team of animators, mention should be made of the redolent sound by Eric Devulder, Pascal Villard, Bertrand Boudaud, and Eric Tisserand and the evocative score by Alexis Rault.

https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-swallows-of-kabul-review-1203217257/

Screen Daily May 16th, 2019 Tim Grierson,

Effective animated drama about two couples struggling under the cruelty of Taliban rule

Two couples at very different phases of life find their destinies intertwined in The Swallows Of Kabul (Les Hirondelles De Kaboul), a melancholy animated drama about the cruelty of Taliban rule. Giving Yasmina Khadra’s 2002 novel a tasteful watercolour treatment, directors Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec risk stripping away the story’s moral indignation in favour of something more bittersweet and restrained. And yet, this tale of repression and injustice is potent enough to overcome the inevitable distancing that occurs because of the animation process.

The unassuming approach has its rewards — most pointedly, that it puts the film’s ironies in stark relief

Premiering in Un Certain Regard, Swallows also screens in Annecy next month, and fans of adult-themed animation, particularly the recent acclaimed The Breadwinner, will seek the film out. A voice cast that includes Simon Abkarian and Hiam Abbass will further attract buyers, and positive reviews should also be a benefit.

Living in Kabul in the summer of 1998, passionate young lovers Mohsen (voiced by Swann Arlaud) and Zunaira (voiced by Zita Hanrot) try to make the best of the fact that their freedom is severely restricted under the Taliban. Meanwhile, a disillusioned middle-aged couple, Atiq (voiced by Abkarian) and Mussarat (voiced by Abbass), aren’t just contending with dangerous fundamentalists — her cancer has progressed to such a point that death seems imminent.

Breitman, a live-action filmmaker, joins forces with Gobbé-Mévellec, a cartoonist, character animator and director, and Swallows has been produced by Les Armateurs, the French company responsible for The Triplets Of Belleville andErnest & Celestine. The co-directors first shot with their cast, however, using those filmed scenes as the basis for the final animation. The result is a movie that has a gentle, lived-in quality associated with hand-drawn animated projects.

The reserved tone sometimes undercuts an infuriating, heart-breaking study of individuals whose existence is hemmed in by the Taliban’s monstrous behaviour. Swallows features everything from stonings to mass executions — to say nothing of small, daily indignities — and certainly there’s an argument to be made that a live-action telling would have simply been too much for an audience to bear. But to a degree, the delicate animation anaesthetises the viewer, allowing us to appreciate the artistry on display rather than focusing on the Taliban’s barbarism, which is often shown off screen. Admittedly, that storytelling remove is a relief, even if one occasionally longs for a more visceral take on this anguished material.

Still, the unassuming approach has its rewards — most pointedly, that it puts the film’s ironies in stark relief. Atiq is a guard at a women’s jail that incarcerates blasphemers who will be killed for their crimes, but his life at home is its own kind of prison because of Mussarat’s failing health — not to mention a rising division between husband and wife. By comparison, Mohsen and Zunaira seem relatively carefree, but they, too, will soon discover how the Taliban’s strangulating grip affects every aspect of their beings.

Alexis Rault’s muted score mostly resides in the background, underpinning key moments without overwhelming them, and likewise the voice performances eschew hysterics, letting the story’s growing despondency reveal itself unadorned. Swallows doesn’t try to wow us with fanciful sequences or cutting- edge animation techniques. If Breitman and Gobbé-Mévellec’s pacing is occasionally too slow — at 81 minutes, the film feels a bit slender — the unexpected intersection of these two couple’s lives builds to an ending that, while melodramatic, articulates in simple language the horror that’s been around them all along.

https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-swallows-of-kabul-cannes-review/5139512.article

May 16th, 2019 Barbara Scharres,

Life in Afghanistan under the Taliban is a subject that has been addressed in the past in a feature- length animated film, Oscar-nominated “The Breadwinner.” Today, the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes festival premiered “The Swallows of Kabul,” by Zabou Breitman and Elea Gobbe-Mevellec, an animated film in which the fates of two couples in 1998 Kabul become linked through accident and tragedy. While “The Breadwinner,” the story of a plucky little girl saving her dad, was a film for the whole family, “The Swallows of Kabul,” is most definitely designed for an adult audience.

The hand-drawn animation has the pleasing, muted appearance of watercolor painting, and is exceptionally detailed and subtly shaded, providing a greater than usual realism in its depiction of city settings. The content is disturbing and morally complex, treating subjects like sex, love, and temptation.

Young liberal-minded married teacher Mohsen is on his way home when he encounters the stoning execution of a woman being staged in the street. The men in the crowd heave their heavy rocks with gusto, and even little kids on the sidelines giggle and try to toss a few. Mohsen picks up a stone and reluctantly throws it. When the crowd disperses and the body is unceremoniously hauled away, he is left stunned with regret and shame.

His wife Zunaira, an artist and a sprightly beautiful woman, is at home working on a wall mural and tapping her foot to rap music. Mohsen returns, and their lovers’ quarrel ends with lovemaking. A few days later, a frightening incident in the street results in Zunaira being publicly punished by the Taliban for wearing the wrong shoes. Another more serious quarrel between husband and wife ensues, and Mohsen is killed in a freak household accident. Zunaira is sent to prison for murder, and has been sentenced to die in the soccer stadium prior to the upcoming game.

May 16th, 2019

Meanwhile, “The Swallows of Kabul” has also introduced Atiq, a middle-aged guard in the prison for women on death row. He is childless and a wounded war veteran, married late in life to a devoted wife who now has terminal cancer. He is a hard unemotional man who still expects to be waited on by the ailing woman. His best friend tells him to ditch her. “No man owes anything to a woman,” he tells doubtful Atiq. “Find a nice, healthy virgin and have kids.”

Zunaira ends up under Atiq’s custody as his sole condemned prisoner. Her beauty disturbs and arouses him when he accidentally catches the sight of her without a burka. Religious taboos, guilt, lust and anger are churning in his conscience. He visits the deserted apartment of Zunaira and Mohsen, and pulling back a wall curtain, confronts her mural – graphic drawings of the couple embracing, and Zunaira’s erotic nude self- portrait. It is an outrage in his sight and a religious offense, but ultimately a catalyst for change as it works on his mind. One of the many beauties of “The Swallows of Kabul” is that it portrays every central character as a complex human being capable of change. A simple rant against Taliban evils would be easy and forgettable. This film threads an undying hope for the future through every shade of its tragedy and sacrifice.

https://www.rogerebert.com/cannes/cannes-2019-bacurau-atlantique-the-swallows-of-kabul

May 17th, 2019 Joseph Owen,

“We’ve already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we’ve forgotten it.” So we’re told in Yasmina Khadra’s novel The Swallows of Kabul, now adapted into animation by Eléa Gobbe Mevellec, whose narrative positions the unutterable bleakness of Taliban rule onto the thwarted expectations of the academic class. Under systems of intolerance freedom is withheld: in the present and in memory. Tyranny deadens autonomy, the self, the ability to fail and flourish.

Summer 1998, Kabul: religious authoritarians have destroyed universities, cinemas and any symbols of perceived cultural decadence. Hypocrites enforce order while indulging in excesses for which they berate the population. Beautiful, educated Zunaira (Zita Hanrot) refuses the burka, spending most of the time cloistered indoors, cast out like the dwindling likeminded.

An accident with her young husband Mohsen (Swann Arlaud), indirectly brought about by the society’s strict treatment of women, pushes her towards execution. Mohsen is a bit of a dope, truthfully, although his complicity in misogynistic laws is suggestively depicted. The system enters his biology: his arm moves without him and casts the stone, caught up in the barbarity of crowds. Atiq (Simon Abkarian), another wayward man with good intentions, is a weathered sceptic. His wife is dying of cancer and he’s rendered quiet.

Mevellec’s animations are austere but effective. The lack of colour reflects the arid environs. It both produces a form of distance and allows for shocking violence. Deaths are bloody and candid, offering a potency and respect perhaps impossible in live action. The finale is brutal and lucid, tempered by a possible cultural resistance. Testosterone, opportunism and hatred fuel the antagonists.

May 17th, 2019 There are incurious moments that treat learnedness and belief in liberty as inherently and always valuable. Hope doesn’t face sufficient critique – it is never considered morally ambiguous. False aspirations aren’t viewed as pernicious, posed against the Taliban’s obvious malevolence. Redemption can’t be always found in the university.

In this way the dialogue tends to abstraction: freedom, possibility, the future. It’s no clearer in 2019 whether the swallows have reclaimed or secured the rights gestured here. The film reaffirms the commitment to liberalism’s ideals in the wake of misery and despair, then and now. But the sacrifices linger; the pictures don’t flinch. From the particular, horrors are made universal and transcendent. No wonder we are all grieving.

https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2019/05/16/cannes-film-festival-2019-the-swallows-of-kabul-les-hirondelles-de- kaboul-review/

13 Film Inquiry May 18th, 2019 Alistair Ryder

Adapted from Yasmina Khadra’s best seller, The Swallows of Kabul vividly captures the horror of life under Sharia Law, packing such a visceral punch in its drama that it’s often easy to forget you’re watching a beautiful work of hand drawn animation. For those who saw The Breadwinner, the similarly themed animation from Irish studio Cartoon Saloon, it’s easy to see why this material may feel too familiar and suffer in comparison, even if it is adapted from a well known source of its own. Thankfully, co-directors Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec aren’t trying to tone down the nature of the horrors to appease a potential younger audience, and from the opening moments bluntly depict the harrowing realities of life under Taliban rule.

For those not familiar with the source material, the story is simple; in the late 90’s, in the capital of Afghanistan, the Taliban have come to power and nobody knows what the future holds. Mohsen (voiced by Swann Arlaud) and his wife Zunaira (Zita Hanrot) hold on to the naive belief that things can get back to how they were, but circumstances have changed dramatically – rules pervade every inch of their daily lives, that causes fractures in their happy coupledom. Zunaira is eventually imprisoned and sentenced to a public execution, but while behind bars she catches the eye of prison warden Atiq (Simon Abkarian). He slowly becomes obsessed with the weak justifications he’s given as to why she deserves the death penalty and decides to quietly take matters into his own hands.

One of the film’s most arresting images takes place in the opening moments; a woman being stoned to death by braying crowds, a laughing child among those throwing rocks, the blood pooling out of the material as she finally collapses. The horrors of life under such an authoritarian regime are all vividly captured, created to make the audience wince as much as they would in a live action film within the same setting. The film also has echoes of a ghost story outside of its haunting, blunt-force violence, as the characters haunted by a past they can no longer retreat to; the burnt-out school and town landmarks like the abandoned cinema appear like artefacts from a distant history that can no longer be repeated once society loses its innocence.

The Swallows of Kabul is a haunting, harrowing drama – beautifully hand drawn, and yet so unflinching in the horrors it portrays, you might start forgetting this is a mere animated feature. https://www.filminquiry.com/cannes-report-2/

DMovies, UK May 16th, 2019 Victor Fraga,

French animation follows two young lovers in Taliban-occupied Kabul, portraying life under the oppressive regime in a colourful yet frank light

Everyone is fallible. Jesus taught us in the Bible: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her”. The Swallows of Kabul does not allude to Christianism. After all, this is Afghanistan under the control of Muslim fundamentalists. Yet it does seem to take Jesus’s teaching quite literally. Mohsen (voiced by French heartthrob Swann Arlaud) reluctantly throws a rock at a female being stoned to death at a public square in the Afghani capital, carrying the capital punishment for an undisclosed offence. He isn’t alone. An angry crowd of men, women and even children throw stones at the woman until she fatally collapses. “She lived in disgrace, so she shall also die in disgrace”, a government official announces. Later, Mohsen comes to regret.

Set in 1998, The Swallows of Kabul rescues fragments of humanity and kindness in the most unlikely places. Despite having thrown a stone, Mohsen is not a monster. He is profoundly in love with his wife Zunaira (Rita Hanrot), and capable of selfless actions in name of his beloved spouse. Meanwhile, prison ward Atiq (Simon Abkarian) is struggling to cope with his wife’s terminal illness. He’s advised to ditch her in favour of a young and healthy female who could bear his children. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s not a monster, either.

Based on the eponymous novel by Libyan writer Yasmina Khadra and directed by two females, The Swallows of Kabul is a very feminine endeavour in its gentle candour and colourful sensibility. Violence is neither fetishised nor sanitised. The blood is seen as it soaks the burka, yet the fatal wounds are never graphically depicted. The directors portray a regime that relentless and sadistically castigates females. Women are less worthy than men.

Movies, UK

May 16th, 2019

Yet men are not portrayed as beasts. Mohsen and Atiq are both struggling to reconcile their humanity with the regime’s perverse doctrine. Until one day tragedy strikes and their paths cross. Atiq’s humanity is rekindled by a single tear in his eye, his wife notes. The movie wraps up with the ultimate sacrifice, a testament that altruism can survive even under the most arid and inhospitable conditions.

Despite being set in Afghanistan, The Swallows of Kabul is a very French film. It’s entirely spoken in French (Khadra’s original novel was also written in French). At times, the animated images look like a Belle Époque painting, the glam and glitz of Paris replaced by the derelict buildings of war-torn Afghanistan. A welcome addition to the small pool of animated war movies made by women, which includes the also French Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi/ Vincent Paronnaud, 2007) and the Irish- American The Breadwinner (Nora Twomey, 2018).

https://www.dmovies.org/2019/05/16/the-swallows-of-kabul-les-hirondelles-de-kaboul/

May 16th, 2019 Valerio Sammacro,

The condition of women under the Taliban regime. In the powerful watercolor of Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec, in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2019

Dirs: Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec. France. 2018. 81mins

Only the swallows are really free in Kaboul. Women, hidden under the burqas, are stoned to death for "fornication", they cannot wear white shoes, they cannot do too many other things. Men, for their part, cannot think otherwise. Once again –as with Waltz with Bashir and the more recent Another Day of Life - animation is the instrument to convey a story thatwould be impossible to depict through live- action cinema.

Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec paint a delicate watercolor to illustrate the daily drama of the female situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. Against the background of soft colors and settings rendered with a light hand, Les Hirondelles de Kaboul follows the story of a guard at a women’s prison who is married to a woman devoured by an incurable cancer. At the same time, two young spouses - once teachers at the university now razed to the ground - dream of a different life for their love. Inevitably, the paths of the two couples will eventually cross.

In this painful yet exciting reflection on rights denied, the film by Breitman and Gobbé-Mévellec questions the possibility of changing a deeply disturbing status quo. Escaping from there - as initially envisaged by the elderly - would be of no use : it is through entrusting the teaching of freedom to the young generations that one day, perhaps, things can take a new course. Meanwhile, through the sacrifice of a few, someone else can be saved.

https://www.cinematografo.it/recensioni/les-hirondelles-de-kaboul/

rtve, spain May 16th, 2019 Esteban Ramon,

'Les Hirondelles de Kaboul', an animated jewel on the burqa empire. The film about the moral crushing of Afghans thrills at the festival

The little gem of the day was in the section Un certain Regard. Les Hirondelles de Kaboul (The Swallows of Kabul), a work of animation - there are certain truths that require an aesthetic mediation- that adapts a novel by Yasmina Khadra, and that has left the Debussy room at Cannes breathless.

Co-directed by Zabou Breitman (also an actress) and by Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec (Ernest & Celestine), Les Hirondelles de Kaboul shows the moral defeat of those Afghans crushed by the terror of the Taliban, focusing on citizens who breathed some freedom and then had to conform to the asphyxiating totalitarian system that was born after the Afghan-Russian war.

Les Hirondelles de Kaboul is the story of two couples, one modern and one traditional, in the empire of the burka. Men have to reconcile the love of their women with a state that orders them to despise them. The more progressive husband will experience a process of conformism with society, the other husband will open his eyes. The real horror is lived by the two women who only exist in the solitary privacy of their homes.

The film was born as a live action project, but it was turned into a 2D animation in which you can always appreciate the roughness of the paper. It is a clear, clean animation, full of ocher, that comes to life because of the realism of the sound that accompanies it.

The film is reminiscent of Persepolis, also the portrait of the advent of an annihilating regime. But even the Iranian Islamic revolution seems like a child's play in comparison with the Taliban state, an everlasting reminder that human societies can take the most perverse forms. The anguish of the

characters combined with a thriller-like plot work perfectly in a movie that will travel through many halls of the world.

http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20190516/les-hirondelles-kaboul-joya-animada-sobre-imperio-del-burka/1939940.shtml

Cineforum, Italy May 20th, 2019 Simone Soranna,

Animation in cinema. Too often we forget that the animated technique is not a genre but actually a mode of creation. The main problem, however, is that it is not only the spectators who forget this, who see animated films as cartoons by associating these works with children, but also the filmmakers themselves who often neglect the component of cinema.

Fortunately Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec do not fall into this category. Probably because they know they have a stimulating although not original project in their hands (neither the themes nor the plot are new), so they work minute by minute, frame after frame, to make their cinema talk, live and breathe. Les Hirondelles de Kaboul is a fresco (an appropriate term given their aesthetic choice of using watercolor as the main basis for animated drawings) of Kabul at the end of the last century where the destinies of four characters are tragically intertwined between prohibitions, hopes, disillusionment and cultural dictatorship, which is even more stifling than military dictatorship.

The strength of the film lies mainly in its ability to tell everything through powerful sequences that are impossible to forget. The drawing is simple and linear, a disorienting choice if we think of the dismay and power of some scenes that verge on horror (above all : the ending in the stadium and the moment of stoning). This oxymoronic intuition at the base of the aesthetic apparatus does nothing but reflect the concept on which the entire film is based: inside and outside, freed and imprisoned, men and women, light and shadow, hidden faces and unveiled faces, pairs of opposites forced to get in touch without any filter, without the possibility of a dialogue, of a comparison. From this overbearing and senseless cohabitation comes the unease and failure of a married couple, a city, a community and more generally a nation. The swallows of the title are decidedly freer than the characters in the story. But not so much because they can soar in the air, but because they can boast a direct and constant contact with previous and future generations.

The trick is all in the ability to look at every individual. Only by converting our point of view, by ceasing to cling to preconceptions could we perhaps hope to really change things. Perhaps we can start by not judging a film because it is animated and not acted, because it is drawn by hand instead of digitally, or because it is in light watercolor instead of hues reflecting dark narrative tension. Cinema is our last door to freedom …

http://www.cineforum.it/focus/Cannes-72/Les-Hirondelles-de-Kaboul-di-Zabou-Breitman-e-Elea-Gobbe-Mevellec