Leylak

When at first you see the pits stretched out in lines across the field, yawning open in the brown earth, it’s hard to tell if the men with their shovels are laying people to rest or digging them up. You might wonder if you’re looking at a war zone. The number of pits suggests that something awful has happened. But the men are wearing masks. When Yusuf (Nadir Saribacak) gets a phone call and his colleague offers to finish a burial so that he can leave early, he washes, changes his clothes and heads off on a train which reveals this to be New York.

In the time of Covid, people like Yusuf have found themselves on the front lines, working extended hours in often dangerous conditions in order to help others carry on living their lives in relative ease. This Oscar-qualifying short film is dedicated to them. before leaving the graveyard, Yusuf lifts fallen flowers and places them atop a heap of earth, a small gesture revealing that he has not lost sight of the fact that the bodies he deals with daily were people and have left loved ones behind. he is stoic about his work, but in his personal life, things are more difficult. Weighed down by pain, he has been keeping a secret from the person he loves most in the world, his daughter Renk (Isabella Haddock), and he is not going to be able to do so for much longer.

An intimate tale anchored by Sabaricak’s sublime performance, Leylak speaks to the experiences of many who have lost loved ones to the pandemic, and is an important contribution to public conversations about grief which have been slow to take shape. It’s beautifully designed, with details of costume and set dressing adding depth to our understanding of the characters. Haddock is new to film, her only previous acting experience coming from school plays, but she’s a real find, sliding easily into the character of a girl who can tell something is wrong. Given her father’s struggles, it becomes increasingly clear that she’s going to have to grow up fast and take responsibility for him. The film is named after the leylak (lilac) flower, which blooms for only one month, in reference to her foreshortened youth, and when she picks up a handful of those flowers one can almost smell them.

A densely packed film capturing a pivotal moment in its characters’ lives, Leylak is a reminder both of the scale of loss due to Covid-19 and of the impact of each individual tragedy. It’s also an affecting portrait of the love that binds immigrant communities together and creates resilience.