You Will Die at Twenty

Amjad Abu Alala's stunningly photographed drama challenges strict dogmatic practices and posits how a life without a moral code can cause much damage.

Abu Alala's ardent attention to daily details, rooted in political and cultural history, offers a powerful symbolic vision of the tormented and violent legacy of dogmatism and dictatorship.

A vibrant and transfixing revelation, "You Will Die at 20" is as novel a vision as we may see this year. From its meaningful ideas on the here and the hereafter, its lesson for Muzamil is that after perishing a rebirth may follow.

Alala deepens this simple, fable-like premise into a lyrical confrontation with the certitudes of faith and the life-giving powers of doubt.

Some may find a clash between its fable-like guilelessness and other moments when the outside world's cynicism breaks in, yet the film remains a touching, nonjudgmental depiction of people circumscribed by superstition.

[The main] character is so passive it is hard to feel much for him as he sits around and wastes most of what little time he has.

You Will Die at Twenty is Sudan's very first Oscar submission, and it's a completely captivating one.

[The film] has a beauty and confidence that suggests a major career ahead for Amjad Abu Alala, whose debut directorial feature it is.

A beautiful, sombre parable.

A wryly funny folk tale of innocence and experience, it's a film about navigating the space between worldliness and godliness.