Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: NAGA [Red Sea International Film Festival 2023 - Jeddah, Saudi Arabia]
The aspect of escape is based in the context of conscience and perspective. "Naga", a desert nightmare tome in a way set in Saudi Arabia, speaks to the element of primal within expectation while creating a thriller both riveting at times and metaphorical. The film follows Sarah, a young Saudi woman, hiding her smoking from her more traditional father who reacted severely from the day she was born (as seen in a flashback). The film played the Midnight Madness section of TIFF and was ultimately picked up pre-Red Sea FF by Netflix. While it does have some interesting sequences including a camp in the middle of the desert which is eventually raided, the story itself is disjointed while still having some visceral elements. It is supposed to be distorted (by its nature)...and the imagery (especially in the mythic and primal element of the camel -- made more interesting by the dark) is quite vivid and terrifying.
Like "Buried" which starred Ryan Reynolds some years back it uses claustrophobia in confined spaces but also wide open spaces as a vice grip. Sarah wants to trust people but she has a wary eye, whether it be her would-be boyfriend, a rival girl or even a hypocritical poet who is not what he seems. More than anything the film shows the strangeness of the roads outside the big city where there is something new, possibily dangerous but also ethereal around every corner; many times with the old crashing into the new. Ultimately, Adwa Bader as Sarah brings a world weariness to her characterb without losing her sense of stamina, focus feminity and adventure, even in the hardest of cicumstances, even if the phone charging as a plot ploy is way overused. "Naga" seems to lose a little of its motivation midway but ultimately comes back to the fact that the world Sarah might be trying to hide from might be the world she is best equipped and have the understanding of to navigate. B
By Tim Wassberg
