FILM REVIEW: TWO GODS

To watch Zeshawn Ali’s moving visual elegy of a person who regains his dignity through faith and ritual captivates the viewer as soon as the film begins. It speaks of one man’s redemption from a hellish life of drugs and crime, but also his downfall and deliverance. It says you can fall, but how fast can you meet the challenge that god lays before you and get up again? The main character is Hanif, who is tall and robust with a charming smile. His face is handsome, but with age and the rough menace of a person who has done prison time, from the mistakes that only wrong choices can scar you with shows. Yet his smile is ageless and as pure and kind as an angel’s.

Hanif is a special man. He washes and prepares Muslim men for their burials. He makes the simple wooden coffins they will rest in for eternity. With each body he tenderly bathes, it seems that he is a phoenix emerging from the flames. Hanif is poignantly strengthening his life force through the care he gives to the dead. His job is to wash the body, cleanse its complicated life on this earth and place it safely into a vessel he has built to repose in at its final destination. Ali sees Hanif as an extraordinary being finding peace within himself through this profoundly sacred ceremony.

Hanif’s decision to convert his life of trouble to something better is not just for him; he wants to share what he has learned. He wants to…