In Jirga, the Australian soldier Mike (Sam Smith) returns alone to Afghanistan three years after his tour of duty. Mike begins a quest that takes him into the stark desolation of the hinterlands, where he must survive both the unforgiving elements and the Taliban. We don’t know his objective until it is revealed 44 minutes into the film. What we do immediately understand is that the stakes are very high.
The tension builds as we wonder if Mike will survive, but Jirga is a contemplation. How do you redress a wrong that you’ve committed? By paying compensation? By asking for forgiveness? By an act of atonement? Or of self-sacrifice?
The Afghanistan in Jirga is as dramatic a desolate landscape as I’ve ever seen, often starkly beautiful. At one point, Gilmour relieves the severity of the desert by dropping in a totally incongruous and unexpected paddle boat in the form of a pastel swan.
Sam Smith is in almost every frame of Jirga, and his performance is impeccable.
Jirga is a notable achievement in filmmaking. Gilmour had received permission to film among the Pashtun in Pakistan’s tribal areas, but was frustrated (and finally harassed) by the ISI, Pakistan’s notorious intelligence force. Gilmour bought a small Sony camera in Islamabad and flew himself and Smith to Kabul. There, under the constant protection of bodyguards, Gilmour was able to shoot the film on the fly; conditions were safe enough to shoot during 20 days of a two-month sojourn. Only two of the Afghan cast had ever been in a movie. Gilmour’s previous film Son of a Lion was also set among the Pashtun and is available on Amazon Prime.
I saw Jirga at Cinema Club Silicon Valley, with a Q&A with writer-director-camera operator Benjamin Gilmour. Gilmour got the idea for the film in his other work as a paramedic, encountering the PTSD of Australian veterans of the Middle East wars.
Gilmour observed that “male bravery is taught as how well you can fight”, and focused Jirga on Mike’s non-violent courage in risking – and even offering -his life. Gilmour developed Mike’s story so the “moral injury he suffered doesn’t take the tragic path” of alcoholic self-medication or suicide that Gilmour has observed firsthand in combat vets.
Jirga was Australia’s submission to the Academy Awards. It made my list of 10 Overlooked Movies of 2019. You can stream Jirga from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Redbox.