[FILM]
HIT THE ROAD
Taking a trip: Rayan Sarlak as the little brother in the family.
★★★★ OUT 29 JULY CERT 12A / 94 MINS
DIRECTOR Panah Panahi
CAST Pantea Panahiha, Hasan Majuni, Rayan Sarlak, Amin Simiar
PLOT An Iranian family embarks on a road trip across their country. The reasons for the trip are mysterious. Mother (Panahiha) and father (Majuni) suggest to their younger son (Sarlak) that his older brother (Simiar) is getting married — but there are bigger secrets not being told.
EARLY ON IN Hit The Road, the family tries to have a “last-gasp party” in their car, with singing and dancing. The hyperactive younger brother — brilliantly played by tiny newcomer Rayan Sarlak — perceptively picks up on this phrase. “In movies, when they say ‘last-gasp’, something bad happens,” he says. His mother tries to reassure him. But Hit The Road is all about last-gasps: the family are on what appears to be a quietly desperate journey, a dash for the border of Iran, a guarded implication of the refugee experience. “Last-gasp party”, then, is a phrase that seems to hit the tone of this strangely sad, gently elegiac, off-guardedly funny film.