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‘A Band of Dreamers and a Judge’ Review: An Imbalanced Iranian Treasure-Hunting Doc About Its Own Making
'A Band of Dreamers and a Judge,' directed by Hesam Eslami, is a chronicle of illicit explorers that ends up less than the sum of its parts.
Shot in Iran, where unauthorized excavations remain illegal, Hesam Eslami’s chronicle of a group of treasure hunters is an occasionally intense process piece that often loses steam, especially during its attempts at intimate portraiture. Unfortunately, the more its lens remains trained on their behind-the-scenes dynamics, the less focused it feels, thanks to its numerous lengthy, static scenes of interpersonal drama that pale in comparison to its riveting depictions of Indiana Jones-esque adventuring (minus the grand theatrics). During illicit nighttime digs — backed by Younes Eskandari’s sharp, eerie, horror-adjacent score — cinematographer Hamed Hoseini Sangari trains the camera’s gaze not on the group themselves, but on the harsh and hilly landscape they traverse, lit by makeshift flashlights that illuminate only slivers of space at a time.
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