the underground
by
Douglas Messerli
Adam
Ali and Sam Arbor (screenwriters and directors) Baba / 2021 [18 minutes]
The
young British Libyan director Adam Ali and Manchester-based Sam Arbor have
created a short tense-drama in Baba about a small gathering of queer
Libyans, forced out of their homes by irate and endangered parents, live truly
underground in the tunnels under the city of Tripoli.
As the film begins the central figure of
this work, Britannia (performed by Ali), as snuck back up into the city to die
his hair blond. He is planning a meeting with someone in the British embassy to
hopefully obtain permission for immigrant status in England as an endangered
being in his own homeland. And even though he knows there are several like him
applying every day, he has great hopes for beginning a new life abroad, jokingly
describing how he will find a beautiful British lover and live happily ever after
in his new homeland.
The only problem is, as his friends Nour
(Elysia Kozinos), Fatima (Colette Dala Tchantcho), and Yo (Usiam Younnis) remind
him, his passport remains in the family home from which he was violently ousted
by Baba (Al Gadema), his father. Moreover, with his now blond hair, he will
stand out even more than usual in the world above ground where they must return
each day to find food and supplies to keep their secret lives functioning.
But the high-spirited Britannia is
determined to break into his own home later that night to reclaim his passport,
and his friends insist that they will accompany him for his protection. Such an
intrusion may not only result in his own death but in the shaming of his entire
family, including his beloved mother.
At least a couple of times in short
flashbacks we see the looming figure of his Baba threatening Britannia as a
young child and sending him into the streets, a terrifying and nightmarish
vision that the young man calls up again and again.
When the time comes, however, Britannia
attempts to sneak out so as not to involve the others; but they quickly awaken
and refuse to let him make the trip home alone. They are his family now and
their love for one another is in strong evidence.
He succeeds in sneaking into the house,
but cannot find the passport, finally reaching his old room, where he witnesses
a small shrine of pictures and a candle his parents have erected there. He
finally discovers the passport, but at that moment his father and mother are
awakened. Again, they loom up like specters, but instead threatening or
challenging him, Baba holds his lost child close and kisses him.
Britannia is so confused, he doesn’t quite
know how to act, as the others remind him it is time to leave both for his own
safety and his family’s.
The next day, he takes a taxi to the
British embassy, the cab driver telling him that he is the second young man he
has driven to the embassy on that very morning. When they reach the stop,
however, Britannia does not leave the cab, but momentarily remains in the back
seat contemplating what to do.
In the end he determines, despite the
odds, to bravely remain in Libya, to help in what the directors describe as “a
burgeoning underground queer culture sprouting from the rubble of the civil
war” in an attempt to “fortify this rare stem of hope.”
As James Reynolds notes in Buzz
Culture: “The film ends with a plea, not to action but recognition – of
hundreds of people in present-day Tripoli who must hide themselves for the sake
of their families. This really hammers home the bravery of those who dare to
live honestly in the face of an openly hostile society.”
Obviously, this film is yet another cry
for queer rights in a world in which so many countries are still so very cruel
to the LGBTQ+ community. Yet this 2021 winner of the Iris Prize doesn’t read
like a diatribe, but shows us the small joys and pleasures that the lost boys
and girls of Libya and found in their small circles of brave queer friends.
Los
Angeles, June 13, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).
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