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Unknown Land (Yemen) – Dreaming on the Island of Socotra

Unknown Land Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

How much do you know about the Arab Spring in Yemen? If you followed the news, chances are you probably know more as the residents of Socotra. That’s because this alien looking island is approx. 380km from the Yemeni mainland and therefore untouched by the mainland’s politics. Unknown Land is a portrait of life on the island and the wandering thoughts of a half dead sailor, marooned on the island following a shipwreck.

Why Watch Unknown Land?

To see the uniquely beautiful landscape of the island of Socotra
If you like listening to dreamy narratives
For it’s musical interludes
To feel truly isolated from the rest of the world

The Breakdown

At the start of Unknown Land a man is washed onto one of the pristine beaches of island of Socotra. It appears that all of his energy was sucked out of him as he struggled to stay afloat after his shipwreck. All he can do is reflect on his past life and make peace with his past choices as he approaches death.

Meanwhile in one of the town’s of Socotra, a old man listens to an old radio as he smokes from a pipe fashioned from a goat horn. The radio gives us our only connection to the outside world. We hear that a sailing boat has sunk off of the shores of Socotra and all of the crew have gone missing. We also hear about the Yemeni protests on the mainland, but the old man’s indifference shows that these are insignificant to the inhabitants of Socotra. The island is too far away to be affected by what happens on the mainland.

The island’s isolation is reflected in the serene footage of Socotra. Firstly, the alien plants and landscape are unlike anything you’ve seen before. There are trees which look like spindly umbrellas, and mountains that disappear into pristine white beaches and emerald coloured sea. Secondly, the islands inhabitants rarely get any dialogue on screen, so you never get to connect with them. This is particularly noticeable with the old man who reappears throughout the film smoking from the same goat horn with a blank stare. The director deliberately emphasises the alien setting and distant people to make the island appear even more remote and dreamy.

Conclusion and What to Watch Next

If you’re into dreamy narratives and alien landscapes, then check out Unknown Land. However, if you’re more of an action thriller fan, it’s best you check out some film difficulty level 2 or 3 films before you watch this.

For another dreamy film from the Middle East, check out Ahlaam (literally translated as dream) from Iraq. It follows a few Iraqis before and after the Iraq War. Otherwise, if you’re looking for something surreal from the Middle East, check out The Challenge. It’s your chance to live the life of the richest Sheikhs in Qatar.

Or if you’re simply looking for easy to watch films from the Middle East, check out some of the following (they’re all great):

Wadjda: A Saudi Arabian coming of age tale featuring an awesome little girl
About Elly: A slow-burning thriller from Iran (although not the film to watch before you go on a big family holiday)
Silvered Water: A portrait of war-time Syria, a great documentary constructed from first-hand footage to experience the horrors of the Syrian conflict.

Taming the Garden – Sundance Film Festival 2021

Taming the Garden is a slow documentary about a billionaire’s project to create a garden of the grandest trees in his country. Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire, and former Prime Minister of Georgia, is the invisible villain of this film, as we follow the construction teams that uproot trees around the country and transport them across seas to his home.

As you’d expect from the poster, the visuals in Taming the Garden are almost unbelievable. It’s not often that you see huge old trees floating on the sea or driven down country roads. These images are more than enough to keep you engaged with the slow pace of the rest of the film. However, it’s a shame most viewers weren’t able to see it on the big screen.

The slow pace of the film shows no sign of a director. Instead, the focus is on the people on the construction team and the local people affected by their project. In between the shots of the trees we hear the conversations and opinions of the locals. It exposes us to a bit of the Georgian psyche – that what’s happening is just another cruel fate that they can’t avoid. Their complaints sound like a group of neighbors gossiping about their hated neighbor.

You can understand why they’re complaining. This invisible billionaire is buying and disappearing the most beautiful trees from their neighborhoods. They’re all trees that have taken centuries to grow, trees with sentimental value, that hold memories from their childhood. Whether it’s taken for granted or not prior to their removal, they give some sort of happiness to the local communities. Their removal therefore uproots some of the memories and happiness it holds, leaving an empty feeling in it’s place. In contrast to the time it takes for these huge trees to grow, Ivanishvili shows that money can quickly take them away.

The kicker of this movie comes in the final scene, when we finally get to see Ivanishvili’s garden. Ivanishvili is still nowhere to be seen. The only people we can see are gardeners patrolling the humongous property in golf carts. They’re the only people that see the beauty of the trees now, and now that they’re placed by so many other beautiful trees, they hardly stand out.

That’s not to say the garden isn’t beautiful. It is. The place, shrouded in mist, appears like a tree heaven that these trees have been transported to in their old age. The immense wealth of Ivanishvili has given him the power to create a garden of Eden. He’s created a garden in a few years which should have taken centuries to create. That it exists, demonstrates the power of a billionaires impatience. And that it exists alongside the rural poverty he’s taken them from highlights the inequality in the country.

Son of Monarchs – The Immigrant Experience and Lost Identity

Son of MOnarchs Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

A Mexican biologist living in New York returns to his hometown after the death of his grandmother. Unlike the urban jungle of New York, his hometown in Michoacán is surrounded by the Monarch Butterflies he studies. His isolation abroad forces him to contemplate his new identity, displayed on screen in vivid magical scenes and memories.

From: Mexico, North America
Watch: Trailer, HBO Max
Next: Lingua Franca, I'm No Longer Here, I Carry You With Me

Son of Monarchs Breakdown

Mendel is fated to test gene editing theories on Monarch butterflies. He’s both named after the father of modern genetics and hails from Angangueo, the main access point for the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. However, the coldness of his job, working in a laboratory in New York, doesn’t match the warmth of his memories growing up at home. The many shots of butterflies under the microscope being picked apart by Mendel’s scalpel removes the majesty of the butterflies and displaces Mendel from his past. At his work, the butterflies are just instruments to test the latest gene editing technology. Whereas, outside of work, they remind him of his home.

As the film progresses, Mendel seems conflicted with how he coldly pulls apart the Monarch butterflies at work. It’s implied that their beauty inspired him to become a scientist and they also appear in some of his happiest memories, as alluded to in the film’s flashbacks. Even in the narrative, he speaks of their majesty and mythology – that they are the souls of the dead returning home, and that they can even perceive mountains that have been hidden for millennia. From the way he dreams and speaks about them, he appears to revere them, instead of wanting to change them. The microscope shots of Mendel dissecting them runs against his thoughts and words.

A few times in the film, the director shoots Mendel in bed with a swarm of butterflies sitting on his body. The image emphasizes Mendel’s affinity for the Monarch butterfly. They like him, travel across imaginary borders to foreign lands before returning home. Their secrets are also hidden, just like Mendel’s buried trauma. These butterflies come to symbolize both his personal past (as the scene pops up when his traumatic nightmares surface) as well as his Mexican identity. Editing their genes perhaps symbolizes how he is also losing his own identity in New York. He’s lost touch with his family and the brother he looked up to and longs for reconnection when he returns home after his Grandmother’s death. At home, he spends his time reliving memories with his friends and family instead of speaking of his new life in New York. When the only colleague he identifies with leaves, he becomes even more lost abroad, which reflects in his attitude – ghosting his white girlfriend and showing no pride in his accomplishments. To regain his self, he has to embrace the butterfly and revere it. So he edits himself to pay respects to the animal that represents home.

Son of Monarchs is a brilliant character study of a Mexican scientist in a foreign land. Like other film’s that focus on the immigrant experience in New York – Lingua Franca, I’m No Longer Here – he doesn’t quite feel at home, and his thoughts are conveyed uniquely through his symbolic relationship with the butterfly. The only distractions are the side narratives which feel a bit empty due to the lack of exposition. These include name dropping the Trump presidency and immigrant crisis without development as well as leaving Mendel’s family relationships undercooked. The butterflies and Tenoch Huerta (who plays Mendel) are the crux of this film.

What to Watch Next

If you’re looking for more indie movies featuring the immigrant experience in New York, check out Lingua Franca and I Carry You With Me. The latter also features a lot of jumping back and forth into the memories of the main characters. There’s also I’m No Longer Here, which follows a similar Mexico-New York-Mexico arc with more of a character study like Son of Monarchs.

Or for more small town Mexico films, you could try Nudo Mixteco, an anthology film set during the Festival of San Mateo in Oaxaca, or Kings of Nowhere, a documentary that follows the last few residents of a flooded town in Northwestern Mexico.

Lastly if you want to watch more movies of protagonists identifying with animals – try Awakening of the Ants from Costa Rica or Aronofsky’s Black Swan.

Geographies of Solitude – AFI Fest 2022

Geographies of Solitude has many impressive shots of Nova Scotia’s Sable Island, a remote island almost 200 miles off the Canadian coast in the Atlantic Ocean. It starts with one of the most memorable shots, a night sky with more stars than you’ve likely ever seen in the sky before. The sheer number of stars makes the shot appear like an impressionistic painting, and the light is so bright, you even get to see a very clear silhouette of a person walking across the horizon. It’s an almost ASMR-type experience watching the opening with its complimentary ambient soundscape. It feels like you could watch the whole film without dialogue as the images and sound lull you into a trance, that it’s a surprise when there’s speech and we’re introduced to Zoe.

Zoe has been living on the island for over 40 years, mostly alone. We follow her as she explores the 12 square mile island every day to log any changes in the environment. She carries a kit with sampling pots and a notepad to capture anything new and log anything different she might see. Some days she might find a dead bird and on others she might encounter a new insect she hasn’t seen before, however, most days are repetitive logging exercises that track very small changes on the island. Despite the beautiful remote location, Zoe’s existence feels very monotonous and lonely.

The filmmaker, Jacquelyn Mills, takes the filmmaking to similarly exhaustive levels. Almost everything is shot using 16mm film, some of which is processed with a variety of experimental methods such as with peat, yarrow, and seaweed. Mills also pushes the soundtrack to the extreme with insect inspired melodies – literally music created to the steps of the local bugs. Both fit the subject of the documentary, as the experimental filmmaking matches Zoe’s own scientific experiments. However, the experimenting feels too exhaustive. There’s so much experimenting, it feels like the point of the experiments in the first place has been forgotten.

There’s a moment near the end of Geographies of Solitude in which Zoe questions the meaning of her own life. Her answer is a little melancholic as she seems to express doubt about her choice to live on the island for 40 years. She wonders if she’s stretched her life too long on the island and spent too much time away from everything else. The film feels a bit similar. The filmmakers have gone to extraordinary levels to make something unique – soaking film in peat and making music from bugs, but like Zoe’s endless logging, what is the point. Despite the beautiful location and beautiful shots, Geographies of Solitude is imbued with a melancholy for the futility of it all.

Head to our AFI Fest 2022 Hub for more reviews from AFI Fest 2022.