Sentimental, sappy, overwrought even; but perhaps in an age where we’re so emotionally desensitized with cooler, calculated films, Bekas—with its simplistic storyline of two parentless brothers from war-torn Iraq who dream of running away to America to meet Superman—is the one that eventually moves us most.

Based on debut big screen director-writer Karzan Kader’s experience of escaping Kurdistan as a child and prolonged from his 2010 short film of the same name, the tile of the film, loosely translated as “parentless” or “extreme loneliness”, is buoyed by two of the most invigorating child performances we’ve seen in years (and played by amateur actors, no less). Zamand Taha is Dana, the fearless, older brother of Zana (Sarwar Fazil), a ferocious and tenacious eight-year-old. The film is set in the ‘90s, with the backdrop of Saddam Hussein’s war illuminating the hopelessness of the time the brothers’ trials. Homeless and penniless, they seek simple pleasures by sneaking peeks of a Superman movie playing at the cinemas (illegally, as neither can afford the one dinar entrance fee) and bathing themselves with donated water by kind neighbors. And when Dana falls in love with a girl who he finds out is moving to the US, he decides to do the same and, along with Zana, hops on a donkey bought with their life savings and naively ventures on the road, to unexpected consequences.

Part road movie, part social commentary, but an all-round feel good family drama with unpredictable sadness, the power of Bekas lies in the performance of its leads. The love between the two brothers is played up to the hilt (the scene where Zana and Dana reunite after the latter is mistakenly driven off in a truck is borderline cheesy), but it’s the naivety and rawness of it all that makes the film so special. Kader’s attention to detail, aided by sweeping cinematography by Johan Holmqvist, also gives Bekas an authentic sense of place that sets this film apart from its contemporaries.