This Swedish
road movie kicks off with 12-year-old Amal and a group of other refugees stepping out of a container in a Turkish port.
Soon the cop screams and Amal escapes, ends up in the company of the smuggler Sam who at first reluctantly, with an eye on the girl's bundle of money, then with greater commitment helps her into Europe.
It's clear that you get some "Last of us" vibes, the now globally popular series where a scarred man as reluctantly as Sam guides a young girl through a dystopian landscape populated by robbers and mushroom zombies.
If it's a refugee allegory, this is the real thing, on a playing field we recognize from the news.
Which gives an acute sense of the times - and newcomer Jwan Alqatami in the lead role fills the screen with self-evident energy - but the acuteness is blunted a little, the longer the film suffers.
The road movie format in combo with the worn-out Omaka couple premise makes the fundamentally traumatic story formulaic and easily predictable.
But it's
still a nice piece of adventure that debut feature director Abbe Hassan (producer of "Måste gitt" 2017) has put together (together with screenwriter Kristoffer Cras).
The long road from the container to the Swedish border is lined with problems and excitement, in a surprisingly child-friendly tone.
Yes, a bit like the old "sports holiday films" (which offered a view of the outside world, for Swedish youth) - if anyone remembers them?
In other words, a film made to be used by ambitious teachers in SO lessons.
It will
in the name of honesty, it was a coincidence that I saw "Exodus" just before the screening of the Dardenne brothers' superbly stripped-down but difficultly edgy refugee drama "Tori and Lukita".
Which did not fall to the former film's favor.
Well, it is of course untidy to put Abbe Hassan's first work next to the scarred Belgian duo and their cinematic elegance, but nevertheless it became clear how a similar theme can be handled in very different ways, and that a little is always more.