Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 3 September

Hit the Road (Panahi, 2021)

After a fairly dis­mal week­end with three unex­cep­tion­al – or worse – films in cinemas, I’m chan­ging my plans for today because I want to cel­eb­rate some­thing great that I saw in a theatre last night.

Thanks to the Wellington Film Society, the editor-in-chief and I got to see some­thing excep­tion­al at the Embassy Theatre and it went some way to restor­ing my enthusiasm.

Hit the Road is a Panahi film but not the Panahi you might expect. Panah Panahi is the son of the great Iranian dir­ect­or Jafar Panahi (Crimson Gold, Offside) and could serve as a com­pan­ion piece to his father’s recent film No Bears, which played last year’s New Zealand International Film Festival. That film fea­tured the film­maker, play­ing him­self, attempt­ing to dir­ect a film in Turkey by remote con­trol while he is stuck in a remote Iranian bor­der vil­lage, unable (or unwill­ing) to cross the border.

That bor­der looms over Hit the Road as we fol­low a fam­ily on a trip in a bor­rowed car. Dad (Hassan Madjooni) is grumbling in the back, broken leg in a cast. Mum (Pantea Panahiha) is anxious in the front pas­sen­ger seat. Youngest son (Rayan Sarlak) is caus­ing may­hem in the back, espe­cially when the fam­ily dis­cov­ers he has brought a for­bid­den cell­phone with him. Older son (Amin Simiar) is pre­oc­cu­pied in the driver’s seat.

We don’t know where they are going but we can tell that a great deal of effort is going into ensur­ing that the young­est son doesn’t com­pre­hend how much stress there is in the rest of the car. He seems imper­vi­ous to it, any­way. Intent on his own bliss.

Hit the Road is a clas­sic road movie, full of incid­ent and incid­ent­al char­ac­ters: a racing cyc­list they have to give a ride to after they inad­vert­ently topple him from his machine, a shep­herd who sells whole sheep so that trav­el­lers can have a fresh sheep­skin balaclava for their per­il­ous journey.

It’s the story of a fam­ily that demon­strates their love by bick­er­ing, and it com­bines a beau­ti­ful appre­ci­ation for the tra­gic absurdit­ies of life with a pro­found sense of the magic in our midst, magic that tells us that, no mat­ter what hap­pens, we have to carry on.

Where to watch Hit the Road

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision

Australia: Streaming on SBS On Demand (free with ads)

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video or Mubi

Ireland: Digital rental

USA: Streaming on Paramount+ or Showtime

UK: Digital rental