“A strong portrait of the horrors of regional violence and how children are often the collateral damage of this vicious cycle.”

Premiering in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present section, Lotfi Achour’s Red Path (Les enfants rouges) plunges the viewer into the harsh reality of religious conflicts in the Tunisian mountains. These tensions are seen through the eyes of adolescent Achraf (Ali Hleli), who witnesses his cousin Nizar’s execution and beheading by a jihadist group before being forced to deliver the head to his small village as a warning against retaliation. The film takes on a perspective that emphasizes the child’s psychological state after this shocking act, as he is pressured by his family to lead his uncle and cousins to the rest of the body, all while being followed by visions of Nizar, to whom he is reluctant to say a definitive farewell.

By choosing to focus on how children are affected by the consequences of warfare, Achour creates a powerful link between the viewer and the story that unfolds on-screen. Achraf is presented as just an ordinary kid who despite his circumstances has a happy life with his family, which makes what happens to Nizar and Achraf’s subsequent distress all the more shocking and heartbreaking. He is aided by a wonderfully naturalistic performance from Ali Hleli, who effortlessly conveys how Achraf is transformed from a kid who has fun playing with his cousin in a small mountain oasis to someone struggling with the psychological aftershocks of the attack. Without resorting to hysterics, Achour and Hleli create a powerful portrayal of PTSD and how it manifests in a variety of ways – avoidance tactics in order to delay facing the reality of what has happened, anxiety attacks that must be contained within oneself, visions of the dead – that show just how deeply Achraf has been affected by the attacks. But to the screenplay’s credit it doesn’t rely on sheer miserabilism in its portrayal of village life or take the view that Achraf will never recover from this traumatic period. While it is clear that his life has forever changed in ways both big and small, the love of his family members and the memory of his cousin will always be a comfort and source of strength to him. The ensemble work in the film is strong across the board, with the young actors playing Nizar and Rahma – Achraf’s friend and Nizar’s crush – doing especially notable work and playing wonderfully off of Hleli’s magnetic central performance.

Wojciech Staroń’s cinematography is the other major asset in the film’s favor. Whether highlighting the beauty and isolation of the vast Tunisian mountains, or homing in on individual family members’ faces during claustrophobic family gatherings as they struggle to process their grief and anger at Nizar’s horrific murder, his visuals do much to establish the film’s initially dreamlike atmosphere that quickly turns tense, a reflection of Achraf’s mounting anxiety. The use of a first-person perspective during some of the more harrowing moments of Achraf’s escape from his captors could have come off as a cheap emotional ploy, but in this case it is an effective tool to convey Achraf’s fear in those moments, and just how physically demanding such an escape is for an adolescent. The occasional use of dreamy flashbacks, whether it be cousins swimming together playfully or a family joyfully dancing at a wedding celebration, demonstrates just how severely this family has been devastated by the horror they are confronted with.

With a lean runtime that doesn’t go far beyond the 90-minute mark, Achour packs a lot into the film, and this sometimes works to its detriment; the many interfamilial relationships can be unnecessarily vague at times, and one senses that the film would have benefitted from more time fleshing out the rest of the family. But overall, Red Path is a strong portrait of the horrors of regional violence and how children are often the collateral damage of this vicious cycle, along with their remarkable resilience in being able to overcome the traumatic events that are sadly a frequent occurrence in their everyday lives.