My Uncle Jens

Bluesky

Odd couple comedy gives way to something deeper and considerably more unsettling in Brwa Vahabpour’s South by Southwest hit about life in the Kurdish community in Oslo. It begins with school teacher Akam (Peiman Azizpour), who was born in Iraqi Kurdistan but pays no mind to that aspect of his heritage, and doesn’t feel any the poorer for it. One day, out of the blue, his uncle Khdr (Hamza Agooshi) turns up on his doorstep. This is a man he hasn’t seen since early childhood, who not only invites himself in but seems disinclined to go away again.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Aklam doesn’t live alone, but has flatmates – Stian (Magnus B Bjørlo Lysbakken) and Pernille (Theresa Frostad Eggesbø). Khdr doesn’t seem to care, quickly making himself at home, and even turning up at the school where Akam works, introducing himself as Jens because he has discovered that Norwegians can’t pronounce his actual name. When they go shopping together, he makes Akam acutely uncomfortable by haggling, but he does try to give something back, introducing the younger man to Kurdish community members whom he knew nothing of before, and, by way of this, to some delicious new foods. But when Akam learns from one of them that Khdr has kept a secret from him, he starts to look at their relationship in a new light.

Subtle observations about the racism that underpins this superficially idyllic society pepper a film which repeatedly forces its hero to question his assumptions, all the while maintaining a current of humour and charm. Trying to figure out what to do about his situation, and worried that he might be breaking the law, Akam poses as a writer in an attempt to get useful information out of a woman from the immigration department – pretty redhead Elina (Sarah Francesca Brænne) – but then finds himself increasingly out of his depth and caught between two sets of obligations, two ways of living that begin to seem incompatible.

Vahabpour’s film reflects on aspects of the second generation immigrant experience that will be familiar to people from many different backgrounds, even as Akam himself often seems to miss the bigger picture, focused as he is on immediate crises. He’s likeable but naïf, which sometimes leads him to do unlikeable things. For his part, Khdr starts out seeming well intentioned by antagonistic, going on to become more troubling until the film tips over and the balance of sympathies shifts yet again. Under normal circumstances, Vahabpour suggests, we might remain unaware of the complexity in both these men. Can they come to understand one another before it’s too late?

Making use of the conventions of culture clash films to direct and misdirect audience attention, Vahabpour delivers a well-crafted tale whose capable leads adjust effortlessly to its changes of tone, taking it from stylised comedy to something that feels very real and human.