Mein, Mehmood

A man is having a hard time making ends meet due to the language barrier.

 

Mehmood (Aleem) is a middle-aged immigrant from the Middle East living in Dubai. His wife and daughter are back in his home country and he is working as a travel consultant. Things are tough because COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on the travel industry and to make things worse, Mehmood does not understand English, which makes it very difficult for him to do his job.

 

This short film from the United Arab Emirates is a hard-hitting drama that straightforwardly reveals the enormous difficulties that immigrants around the world have to deal with due to the fact that they do not speak a particular language. In this case, that language is English and the protagonist of this story appears to be unable to progress in the world because he cannot communicate via this language. His line of work requires him to know English and therefore he fails to reach his assigned targets and struggles to send money back home, for his daughter's education. It is a sad story, one that focuses on an unfortunate individual who lacks a specific quality in order to move forward and who seems isolated from the entire world, as he is never shown interacting with anyone face-to-face, only through devices.

 

Aleem delivers an emotional performance as a well-meaning person who has found himself living away from his country and facing the same challenges that many immigrants do, which include language barrier and being away from loved ones. He tries hard to deal with everything, unfortunately things just get harder and harder for him and the audience will most likely sympathise with him.

 

Saha does a great job as director and the cinematography by Abhishekh Saravanan looks wonderful. Karthik Bhandare does an amazing contribution with the dramatic and beautiful score.

 

This film is dedicated to hard-working immigrants around the globe and it points out the problems they often have to deal with due to language barriers. It also indicates that the English language has a dominant role worldwide, affecting people's ability to find work and progress. It theorises that if one does not understand English, they are likely to have trouble moving forward with their life even though there are so many other languages. This is a viewing that provides a thoughtful experience.