Rob Munday
Despite the on-going fight for equality around the world, there are still a number of countries where you will find yourself persecuted for your race, religion or sexuality. In Adam Ali and Sam Arbor’s 18-minute IRIS prize-winning short film BABA, the co-directors shine a light on the specific situation for the LGBTIQ+ community in Libya, while also creating a universal narrative centred around identity and acceptance.
A tense, insightful watch, BABA follows queer Libyan teenager Britannia as he struggles to process his feelings surrounding his estranged family and his homeland. Living in the tunnels below the country’s capital, Tripoli, our young protagonist has to make a sudden return to his family home in order to retrieve his passport. As he plans to leave the oppression of his birth place behind, in search of a better life in the UK, he is forced to face his demons – the titular father figure.
Adam Ali not only co-directs BABA with Sam Arbor, he also stars as the short’s lead Britannia
Described by its creators as “the origin story of a young man who decides to love his queerness and his heritage”, the directorial duo felt compelled to bring this story to the screen due to a lack of coverage regarding the “rights to protect LGBTIQ+ people” in Libya.
“The stories of homosexual and gender queer acts leading to imprisonment, torture & brutal killings are terrifying”, the pair explain as we discuss their motivations behind BABA. Although Ali and Arbor wanted to highlight that to be queer in the country means living in constant fear, they also wanted to show that there is “a burgeoning underground queer culture sprouting from the rubble of the civil war”, in the hope that they can help “fortify this rare stem of hope”.
It’s a powerful and clever piece of filmmaking. Although what we see is limited mainly to the underground world of Britannia and his queer family, we still manage to feel immersed in the Libyan environment, despite seeing very little of the country. Whilst some of this may, of course, be down to access/budget restrictions, the locations and cinematography work to heighten both the immersive nature of the short and the tension of the storyline.
Shot mainly in Britannia’s subterranean home the locations help increase the film’s tension and the underground feel of the community.
BABA may centre on some of the negatives of Libyan culture, but it isn’t a short looking to paint a pessimistic portrait of the country. In fact, the directors actually describe it as a “love letter to Libya” and it’s this positivity throughout the film that really struck me. Ali and Arbor could’ve taken their narrative to much darker places, but ultimately this is a story of friendship and hope and that is represented poignantly in their impressive filmmaking.
As the filmmaking pair declare in their director’s statement, they “dream of young queer people across the world, huddling round a laptop seeing our film and wondering for the first time, whether they could love their country, their home”. An optimistic goal for an optimistic film.