Death Is Hard Work

Abdel Latif makes his dying wish, to be buried in his home village, known to his son Bolbol. Bolbol enlists his older brother, Hussein, and sister, Fatima, to accompany him in transporting the body from Damascus to Anabiya, near Aleppo, where relatives will comply with Abdel Latif's last wish. It's normally a two-hour drive, but Aleppo and Damascus, and everywhere in between, are on opposite sides of a civil war. This surreal tale discloses the myriad tyrannies of war, loyalty, religion, duty, and bureaucracy. Can the family survive ten checkpoints, arrests, interrogations, and abuse? Can the corpse survive 48 hours on ice in a minivan? Nicely read by Neil Shah, who keeps Bolbol's narrative moving along. Descriptions of the physical and psychological absurdities of fear, stress, and decomposition are quite graphic and as often funny as they are disgusting.