Responsibility, PTSD and culture clash fuel Benjamin Gilmour's unusual Aussie film, JIRGA

Australia’s pick for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2019 Oscars and winner of the Best Independent Film Award from AACTA, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, JIRGA, the new film by Benjamin Gilmour (shown below), despite its production history being about as fraught as they come, turns out to be -- if you can forgive one whopping bit of coincidence and unbelievability -- a remarkably unusual, thoughtful and finally very moving experience.

Why so fraught? Here's what the writer/director tells us in the press notes for his film:

“I was approached by a Pakistani producer who had found a Pashtun financier ready to put up $100K for the production of my script in Pakistan. My film was set in Afghanistan, but to benefit from the finance we'd need to shoot in Pakistan's Khyber Paktunkwha province. I approached Sam Smith, a talented actor from Sydney (not the singer) who was up for the adventure. We flew to Islamabad, only to discover the financier did not have permission to shoot from the ISI -- the Pakistan secret service -- who actively blocked the production after reading the script, considering it too politically sensitive. The Pashtun financier pulled his money out. Sam Smith and I were stranded in Pakistan with no team and no money and were now being tailed and harassed by the secret service. We could have flown back home then, but instead decided to shift the whole shoot to Afghanistan, risking our lives and investing some crowd funding and personal savings to make it…”

The result certainly proves worth everyone's time and finances (including ours, at least in terms of 78 minutes spent, together with the price of a movie ticket). This tale tells of an ex-soldier who committed an act somewhere between accident and war crime, and who has been hugely troubled by it ever since. He has determined to return to Afghanistan and the village/community where the event took place and offer himself up to "justice."

Fortunately the actor chosen to essay the role of ex-soldier, the generically-monikered Sam Smith (shown above and below), makes a most attractive and believe protagonist. Graced with handsome face and lean, lithe body, Smith is onscreen almost constantly, and he slowly pulls us in to his odd, difficult and sad quest. There are varied ways soldiers and ex-soldiers handle their individual Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder -- from group therapy or out-of-control anger to murder and suicide.

Smith's character Mike Wheeler's choice is certainly one of the more unusual ones, but the filmmaker and actor have collaborated well and made this choice strange but believable, thanks to a generally good script that shows both the difficulty of communication via language and the help that money (taped to our protagonist's body, above) can provide.

Along his journey, Mike encounters a kind and caring taxi driver (Sher Alam Miskeen Ustad, above), who bonds with our hero via music and a strange boat trip on a pink swan raft, before the two must separate suddenly when the Taliban appears.

This "escape" scene, below,  proves the movie's low point, as it is more than a tad unbelievable, as is the wandering in the desert that follows before Mike has somehow been found/rescued by a band of what seemed to me Taliban soldiers but perhaps were just a group of unattached "freedom fighters."

The leader of this group eventually bonds with Mike (thanks to the one fellow in the group who speaks enough English to communicate).

One wonders why the filmmaker did not dispense with the foolish "escape" and simply have the armed men at the road block be the group who captures Mike, keeping him in its underground lair until it eventually understands his mission and helps guide him toward it.

That said, the remainder of the film slowly coalesces into a very believable and moving conclusion involving that titular Jirga (below), as well as the family member (at bottom) of the dead Afghan man who unknowingly set Mike on his crazy but somehow understandable mission.

Though most of the supporting cast are untutored amateurs, they play their various roles well enough to pull us in, and Mr. Smith, via face and subtle acting skill, does the heavy lifting gracefully and well. Gilmour's film highlights the kind of trauma that has bedeviled so many of the soldiers who fought in the seemingly unending and certainly pointless middle-eastern wars -- both Americans and, in this case, Australians who fought in Operation Slipper.

From Lightyear Entertainment, in English and Pashto (with English subtitles), Jirga opens this Friday, July 26, in New York City at the Village East Cinema, and in the Los Angeles area on August 2, at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. More playdates should be coming soon. Click here to view the most current schedule of cities and theaters.