‘Hijamat’ review: Jafar Panahi produces Nader Saeivar’s disjointed study of a Turkish immigrant family in Berlin

Dir/scr. Nader Saeivar. Germany. 2026. 103mins

The Turkish immigrant family of Murat (Kida Khodr Ramadan) has thrived in Berlin. Restaurant owners, they are pillars of the local Turkish Muslim community and have a caring, supportive relationship with their German neighbour. But when rumours spread about the sexuality of Murat’s younger brother Kerem (Jael Cem Ilhan), the family finds itself torn between the condemnation of their conservative community and the more liberal attitudes of their home city. The latest film from Jafar Panahi collaborator Nader Saeivar starts robustly, with a vivid, absorbing immersion into Berlin’s Turkish community, although loses some of its initial propulsive assurance in an increasingly repetitive and disjointed second half.

Loses some of its initial propulsive assurance in an increasingly repetitive second half

This is the fourth feature from Saeivar, whose other directorial outings include The Witness, which won the audience award in Venice’s Orizzonti strand in 2024, and his 2020 feature debut The Alien, which premiered in Berlin. Saeivar has achieved the most success, however, as Panahi’s regular co-writer. He was Oscar-nominated, along with Panahi and Shadmehr Rastin, for the screenplay for It Was Just An Accident and he shared a Cannes prize for Best Screenplay for Panahi’s 2018 picture 3 Faces.  Hijamat’s potent sense of community and place, plus Panahi’s involvement in this project – he is credited as both a producer and the film’s editor – should ensure further interest on the festival circuit following the film’s premiere in Karlovy Vary competition.

The film opens with a terrific sequence, shot initially from the eye-level of a child hiding in a cupboard. Through deft use of sound, the sequence captures the overwhelming experience for this little boy of being trussed up in a miniature suit and paraded through a glitzy event in his honour. Waiters carry around trays bearing plastic scimitars and comedy noses, guests brandish envelopes stuffed with banknotes – it is, we learn, an event to celebrate the child’s circumcision. But this is not his story. The camera slips away from the main party to join Murat as he warns his wife Leyla (Nicolette Krebitz) to keep an eye on Kerem, then sneaks into the kitchen to swig illicit liquor.

Murat was right to be worried about his younger brother. Within minutes, Kerem is being beaten up by fellow guests. A visit to seek counsel from the charismatic local Iman (Aziz Capkurt, excellent) the following day casts more light on the tricky situation in which the family finds itself. The Iman has another agenda – he is pressuring Murat’s father Ibrahim (Vedat Erincin) to sell back his restaurant to its previous owner. There’s a tacit suggestion that Kerem’s current woes and contested ownership of the business might be linked. “Look out for your son,” says the Iman, with a smile that fails to conceal the threat in the words. “He’s a good boy. It would be a shame…”

There’s a schism at the heart of the family, with Kerem’s parents keen to follow the Iman’s advice and engineer a marriage for Kerem as quickly as possible. But Leyla and Murat are more sympathetic. Both encourage Kerem to be true to himself. Both, it becomes clear, know a thing or two about living a lie. Korovan-born Leyla watched her parents slaughtered by Serb forces and had to pretend to be Christian in order to survive. And Murat is a closeted gay man whose marriage to Leyla is a hollow charade.

Caught in the centre of all this, Kerem is an oddly underpowered presence in the film. He feels, at times, more like a plot device than a fully-rounded character. But then perhaps that’s the point – he is in his early twenties and not fully-formed as a person. The stress of finding himself in a battle zone between the conservative religious beliefs of his parents, the fire and brimstone preaching of the Iman and the acceptance of Berlin’s queer community is almost too much for him to process.

Meanwhile, Murat’s own belated coming out is clumsily handled, stewarded as it is by a hippy-wigged Moritz Bleibtreu playing a faintly ridiculous ‘alternative health’ practitioner. It’s a jarringly fake element in a film which, for the most part, is elevated by its authenticity.