Tahir and Amine, who live in N’djamena, wake up one morning to learn that their father has left home. The brothers go looking for him and end up hanging about and going to the movies. At the cinema, they see their father on the big screen and decide to steal the reel as a memory of their absent dad.

Deeply invested in portraying childhood and family in all of its complexity, this intimate drama also examines the state of Chad and the central African country’s many hardships. Brotherhood turns allegorical under Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s deft balancing of the personal with the political.