Nader Saeivar’s Uneven Drama at Karlovy Vary: A Review of ‘Cupping’ Produced by Jafar Panahi

According to CinemaDrame News Agency, film critic Alice Bennett writes in an exclusive op-ed: Cupping (Hajamat), written and directed by Iranian-Turkish filmmaker Nader Saeivar, competed for the prestigious Crystal Globe in the Main Competition section at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Edited and produced by the acclaimed auteur Jafar Panahi, the film offers an honest yet narrative-frayed exploration of the profound rift between tradition, religion, and personal identity within a diaspora family. Despite Saeivar and Panahi’s history of successful collaborations—including The Witness, 3 Faces, and No Bears—this issue-driven drama loses its narrative footing in the second half due to excessive exposition and a cluttered screenplay.

The film opens with a brilliant, continuous master shot depicting a circumcising celebration (Sünnet) for a young boy in Berlin—a joyous atmosphere that abruptly shatters upon the arrival of sudden, devastating news. Kerem (played by Jael Cem Ilhan), the youngest son of a traditional Turkish immigrant family residing in Germany, has been brutally beaten by extended family members following the leak of private photographs revealing his intimate relationship with a German man. Within this crisis, a generational divide quickly manifests. His older brother, Murad (Kida Khodr Ramadan), and Murad’s Kosovar wife, Leyla (Nicolette Krebitz), exhibit a more open-minded, Westernized perspective and stand by Kerem. Conversely, the strict, patriarchal patriarch Ibrahim (Vedat Erincin), who amassed a significant fortune through restaurant ownership in both Berlin and Turkey, leverages his tradition and financial power to control and suppress his youngest son. Ibrahim forces Kerem to a mosque to confess before a local Sheikh (Aziz Çapkurt). However, the narrative later uncovers that the Sheikh’s motivations are far from purely spiritual; in complicity with an opportunist businessman in Turkey, he exploits the scandal to pressure Ibrahim into selling his lucrative restaurant.

As Saeivar navigates these overlapping crises, the screenplay consistently injects new subplots that compromise the film’s structural focus. One prominent digression introduces Margot (portrayed by Nastassja Kinski), Ibrahim’s reclusive and ailing neighbor, who still suffers from the lingering trauma of escaping East Berlin to West Berlin decades earlier. While Kinski’s presence is undeniably magnetic, reminding audiences of the persistent weight of exile and intergenerational refugee trauma, her arc never organically connects to the central domestic drama. Furthermore, late in the film, the narrative abruptly shifts to explore Murad’s own repressed desires. This development emerges in a sudden and unconvincing fashion, though it serves as a vehicle for a brief cameo by German cinema star Moritz Bleibtreu. Bleibtreu portrays a traditional therapist sporting a bizarre hairpiece, who attempts to treat Murad using wet cupping therapy (the traditional practice of “Hajamat” from which the film derives its title).

Despite structural inconsistencies, pacing issues, and loose narrative threads, Cupping succeeds in presenting a raw, authentic window into the universal burdens of identity, secrecy, and shame that persist within conservative immigrant communities. Clocking in at 1 hour and 43 minutes, the film is an endeavor whose narrative potential never fully blossoms due to its dramatic turbulence. Nonetheless, elevated by Emre Erkmen’s deliberate cinematography and Jafar Panahi’s sharp editing rhythms, it still delivers poignant, thought-provoking moments that capture the eternal conflict between duty and instinct within diaspora cinema.