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‘Silent Trees’ Review: A Kurdish Refugee Comes of Age in a Harrowing Documentary
By following a grieving family of Kurdish refugees, director Agnieszka Zwiefka captures the daily indignities of modern migrants in 'Silent Trees.'
Zwiefka and cinematographer Kacper Czubak also use phone screens to light some of the movie’s most emotionally powerful moments, including and especially Runa’s father receiving bad news in a darkened car, as his device illuminates the tears he tries so hard to withhold. She’s seen occasionally sketching her memories and surroundings in black and white, and the studio’s cartooning matches her style as it depicts, with abstract flourishes, both her dreams and her darkest fears, as the trees of the red zone forest take on disturbingly ghostly qualities. A film in which daily uncertainties hollow its subjects out from within — but in which even the smallest joys start to feel defiant — “Silent Trees” puts human faces to the statistics and news tickers that have defined modern refugee crises.
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