QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN
A story with a boxing background shines a light on a much bigger fight in this beautiful film. Set in Tunisia, Round 13 follows Kamel (Helmi Dridi), a former boxer who has settled down to a quiet domesticated life with wife Samia (Afef Ben Mahmoud) and young son Sabri (Hedi Ben Jabouria). Sabri has grown up on stories of his father’s career, wanting to follow in his footsteps. However, through an accident at school, it’s discovered that the boy has a tumour in his arm. Desperately scraping for the money and resources to treat him, Kamel and Samia are driven to their limit in the battle to save their son.
While boxing provides a metaphor for the journey, the film is neither explicitly a boxing movie nor is story about cancer itself. Instead, director Mohamed Ali Nahdi makes it a story of people, and it is all the more captivating for it. Conversations with estranged relatives are given as much weight as the treatment itself, as the emotional strain of their situation is illustrated perfectly.
Everything from the dialogue to the way shots are framed is subtle, grounded, and realistic. Small but devastating changes are included but never directly explained, allowing the viewer to piece together what has happened. Little shifts, such as Kamel shaving his own head in order to support his son through chemotherapy, or the looming presence of the bed next to Sabri, which used to contain another patient, show the quiet storm through which the family are moving.
As well as visually, there are fragments of story that are never fully expanded, such as a period Kamel spent in Italy that is alluded to ominously, as is a question about his faith that is intentionally left unanswered. It’s to Nahdi’s credit that nothing is spoon-fed to the audience, as the inference makes so much more impact and allows you to focus on these people in the moment.
Nahdi’s camera sits with the film’s characters, showing them absorbing what has happened in a way that is quietly devastating. Watching at the back of waiting rooms, through doorways and windows, or from the perspective of an empty bed, the camera follows the journey in a way that feels intimate but never intrusive.
Dridi doesn’t fit the archetype of a cinematic boxer, instead taking a new perspective away from something like Rocky (John G. Avildsen,. 1976) or Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980). Kamel is someone relearning how to live in a world where opponents cannot be knocked out, especially this one, and the agony comes out in every frame. Equally, Mahmoud is tremendous as Samia, the partner who has had to bear untold burdens and suffers this greatest trial with dignity.
Ending with a monologue that will shatter your heart into pieces, Round 13 is a subtle but triumphant exploration one of the hardest experiences any one of us can imagine. Without exploitation or melodrama, it is a stirring tribute to the power of ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
Round 13 just premiered in the Critics’s Picks strand of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
