The Ceremony (2025)

There is a lot of potency in this monochrome drama, but I felt that somehow it managed to succumb to a style over substance philosophy rather than a more characterful one. Essentially it’s the story of a younger Christian Romanian lad “Cristi” (Tudor Cucu-Dumitrescu) who having had an altercation over a stolen watch with some of his Bradford car-wash workers, has to head into the wintry bleakness of the Yorkshire Dales with the elderly Kurdish gent “Yusuf” (Erdal Yildiz) to dispose of a body. Unfamiliar and initially distrustful of each other, the two men’s journey into the darkness offers them an opportunity to overcome some of the innate prejudices both have of each other, their faiths and their cultures. What does work really quite well here is the premise that people’s gang behaviour is so often profoundly different from when it is simply one-on-one. Stereotypes and generalisations can be swept away in favour of actual experiences as they get to know a little more of one another. No, it doesn’t turn into any sort of bromance, nor are there rose-coloured cottages at the end, but you feel that both actors are convincingly conveying an alternate message. One of respect, less of testosterone and of learning not to judge because that’s what everyone else does, or has done in the past. Unfortunately, for me at any rate, the photography is left to do too much of the heavy lifting and as the story progresses, the characterisations sadly rather fizzle out and the pace becomes borderline glacial. The multi-lingual nature of the dialogue does give it authenticity, but to be honest I wasn’t so impressed with the audio mixing, and flitting between dialogue and subtitles against what is frequently a very slate-grey background can be a bit waring on the eyes after a while, too. It’s a solid effort from a cast who really didn’t come across as actors at all, and though it is a bit rough around the edges it is worth a watch - but in a cinema if you can, on television it might just get a little lost.