Suleiman Mountain Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
Ever wondered what life would be like growing up in the back of a converted East German truck with an alcoholic con man for a father, a practicing witch doctor for a mum, and your father’s second wife who’s probably young enough to be your sister. Well, here’s your chance to experience it. Join the crazy road trip in Suleiman Mountain.
From: Kyrgyzstan, Asia
Watch: Trailer, Amazon
Next: Shoplifters, Little Miss Sunshine, The Wounded Angel
The Breakdown
Suleiman Mountain starts with a boy being woken up in dorm room full of orphans. He’s told his mum has arrived to take him home so he wakes up in confused excitement. His ‘mum’ walks him out and tells him to text his ‘dad’: “I’ve found our son”.
The reason I’m using quote marks is because this odd couple isn’t the young orphan’s parents. In fact, they’re not really even together anymore. The ‘mum’ only went to adopt him to get her old flame to reappear. And reappear he does, with a younger wife and with all of his macho characteristics still intact. The signs aren’t good for the newly adopted orphan.
Perhaps you’re an optimist and you think that having a dysfunctional family is better than no family. But the more you watch of this film, the more you’ll realise that this ‘family’ is just a crazy bunch of individuals living in the back of an East German truck.
What to Watch Next
Suleiman Mountain reminded me of a blend of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters and Little Miss Sunshine. Shoplifters, like Suleiman Mountain, also features a make-shift family that sticks together to escape loneliness, but it’s slightly more heart-warming. Little Miss Sunshine is also more heart warming than Suleiman Mountain, but both films feature some crazy characters stuck within the confines of a vehicle for most of the film.
Or if you’d like to see another Central Asian film with a tone that captures the bleakness of life in it’s wandering characters, check out Kazakhstan’s The Wounded Angel.
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