Paikar

A Dutch-Afghan filmmaker confronts his authoritarian father, an imam with a violent past, in an attempt to heal their fractured relationship. Travelling across Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, they reflect on family, faith and displacement. Part personal reckoning, part universal search for freedom, the film explores liberation from inherited fear and emotional exile.

Dawood Hilmandi: ‘This journey began with my father, Baba, a man who for years was like a statue of stone and silence to me. My curiosity as a child was always suppressed. Yet one unanswered question remained: how can I make sense of a world I am forbidden to question? Gradually, I realised that his silence was a frozen ocean […]. Beneath that frozen surface flowed a current of inherited suffering […].

There comes a pivotal moment when we must find the courage to become curious — to question, to challenge, and to examine critically the foundations of the oppressive systems imposed upon us, both within and around us. Paikar […] is about reclaiming the right to ask “why?”. It is for anyone who has inherited silence, who has carried pain across borders, and who still dares to believe that healing is possible through questioning and the insistence on telling our stories.’