Cinephile (Short Subject): One Day This Kid
4/5 Stars
Plot: “Under the weight of his father's expectations, Hamed contends with fear, desire and shame, in search of a self unknown.” -IMDB
Review: I was in middle school. I was at church camp. I was at the pool. I remember staring at the lifeguard. I couldn't take my eyes off him.
Lying in my bunk later that night, I named this revelatory feeling of mine. Innocently, and without immediate thought given to the consequences, I named it attraction. It was the first time I felt attracted to someone of the same gender. I was both terrified and exhilarated by these feelings of mine. Given this was a Southern Baptist church camp, I had been preconditioned to name these feelings of mine as sin without fully understanding the reasoning. The adults around me spoke of homosexuality as a sin greater than denying Jesus as the Messiah.
That preteen version of myself had a decision to make. I either buried an out and open version so far down that no one could find it, or I fully explored these feelings, walking through any closet door they might open.
For a long time, I suppressed these feelings of mine. I did so until the burden became too great and the weight of depression too heavy. After moving across the country to release myself from the grips of my religious upbringing and more than a year of therapy, I finally walked through the ultimate closet door. At the age of 27, I told the world I was gay.
The struggle with my sexual identity will always draw me toward other stories of similar experiences. Coming of age stories and tales of those loudly professing the truest version of themselves will always catch my attention. Empathy draws me in, and great storytelling holds up a mirror to my own story. That is what attracted me to the short film, “One Day This Kid.”
Hamed is a kid from Afghanistan living in British Columbia. We aren’t necessarily sure how his small family got to Canada, but we do get scenes that lay the groundwork for the great conflict of this film. Hamed’s father, seeing his son enmeshed in Western culture, desperately wants his family to hold tightly to their Afghan and Islamic culture.
This is the first great connection I have to this film. While I wasn’t raised as a Muslim, I spent countless hours sitting on the wooden pews of a Southern Baptist pew. I felt Jesus softly calling me to repent from my sins at an early age. Once upon a time, I even believed God was calling me to be a youth minister. For so long, the great struggle of my sexuality landed squarely on the shoulders of the conflict with my religious beliefs. The same struggle is evident in this film.
As Hamed moves through child and puberty, we see him through innocent moments with sexual undertones. These undertones echo loudly because of religion. Early into this story, you can see the direction this film is heading. The central question of this queer coming of age story becomes one that can be asked of any person who has ever struggled with their sexuality. Will Hamed arrive at adulthood fully realized, or will he remain closeted, choosing religion over his truth? In this question, so much of this story personally rang true for me. With some minor differences, this story midway through was beginning to feel like my own.
And then we see Hamed arrive at adulthood. At a queer bar, we watch him dance with another bar, and suddenly his chosen path is known. But what about his parents? What about their relationship? As I remembered the fear associated with coming out to my family, I also recalled the safety and love I found in my chosen community. If my family had chosen to walk away from me, at least I would have them. I was lucky. In a moment of uncaring joy on a dance floor, I watched Hamed fold himself into that community, but I found myself hoping a relationship with his father remained.
The nature of that relationship is not something I will spoil here, and it is not something the film spoils either, as it fades to black in a tender moment that also rang profoundly true for me.
For a short film that I randomly chose from a random streaming service, I did not expect to find a story mirroring my own. While Hamed and I have lived different lives from different backgrounds in different countries, raised to believe different things, his journey toward his true identity reminded me of the great gift art can give its audience. This gift is all that I ask of great cinema. Just give me something true.
Be good to each other,
Nathan
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