Keswick Film Club - Reviews - You Will Die At Twenty

"You Will Die At 20", the film shown at the Keswick Film Club on Sunday, is a moving meditation on what it means to live in the present. This gentle but powerful film is Sudan's first entry for an Oscar, and is shot in a dreamy, almost mythic way, suffused throughout with radiant imagery.

In Sudan, at a Sufi naming ceremony, the priest predicts that baby Muzamil will die at age twenty. His father, unable to deal with the curse, leaves home forcing his mother to raise him alone in an overly protective way.

We see Muzamil as a young boy wistfully wanting to join in games with other children, but being ostracised as he is touched by death. As an older teenager he copes by immersing himself in the traditions and proscriptions of the Koran. But his wish to live is painfully circumscribed by his death sentence.

But there is redemption. Muzamil discovers his will to live mainly through the tentative relationship with Suleiman, a villager who has travelled the world and can show it with film footage. Muzamil is able to see in the films that other places, lives and possibilities exist.

The film is a parable, warning of the danger and perhaps the attractions of blind, unthinking belief in religion and superstition. The promise of death means fear and caution rather than trying to make the most of life.

This is also an allegory – the film is dedicated to those who died in the Sudanese Revolution a few years ago. After many years of repressive dictatorship, the regime was overthrown and a secular government gained power.

The film is a plea for individual freedom which is limited by the rural village traditions, an undemocratic state and perhaps by the limits we impose on ourselves. Are we born to die, or born to live?