An impressive, low-key, yet powerful feature debut from Yorkshire writer/director Jack King earns its place in the Competition Features strand at Edinburgh Film Festival 2024.
Anyone who has spent any time in the West Yorkshire countryside in the winter months will totally appreciate why writer/director Jack King chose to film The Ceremony in black and white. The barren landscape, low clouds rolling in over hilltops, and the constant rain seem ineffably suited to cinematographer Robbie Bryant’s monochrome images.
Our story begins, however, in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, among a group of undocumented male migrants who work at a car wash. A mix of Romanian and Arab speakers, the men work hard for an unscrupulous boss and are clearly prone to manipulation and exploitation due to their status in the UK. Although they are all in the same situation, tensions are constant between the Romanian and Arab cohorts, with each having their own prejudices against the other ethnic group. A tragic death among their colleagues forces two men into a decision to find a suitable burial place for the deceased together to avoid bringing the unwanted attention of the authorities to the car wash.
Christi (Tudor Cucu Dumitrescu) and Yusuf (Erdal Yildiz) are the two men, each with their own reasons for wanting to find a fitting place for the body to rest. Christi is a young man who has ended up in Bradford after his parents abandoned him when he was young, and his grandmother – who brought him up – passed away; he has no one else. Yusuf, a middle-aged man from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, is trying to find a way to bring his wife to join him after fighting brought devastation to their family. Yusuf is a Muslim and wants to ensure that the deceased receives the appropriate burial rites.
What follows is a muddy, cold, bleak 24-hour road trip in which the men’s prejudices bubble to the surface, along with their personal histories. They reluctantly and gradually share details as their journey is thwarted by empty petrol tanks, arguments, rain, and snow. Tested both emotionally and physically by the journey, the kindness of a stranger eventually comes to their rescue.
Obviously this film was made many months ago, but given the unrest in the UK in recent weeks and the poisonous hate speech which gained traction among sections of the public, The Ceremony’s empathetic presentation of human beings trying to do their best in a toxic world is very timely.
The Ceremony leaves us with the conclusion that, no matter where we come from, what language we speak, or how we choose to pray, deep down we are connected by humanity. If we choose to find a way to break through the prejudices, there is more that unites us than divides us – and there are many who would do well to remember this.