TASBEEH | Omeleto

Two childhood friends reunite in their working-class town.
TASBEEH is used with permission from Iqbal Mohammed. Learn more at / iqfilmmaker .
Abz and Sid are two old friends who are meeting up after not having seen one another in a while. They were childhood friends in the north of England, but now their lives have diverged. Sid has given up on his dreams of making music and now works in the shop run by his dad.
But Abz went away to college, interviewing for jobs near London and generally moving up in the world.
They chat and catch up, which only makes clear how much they've grown apart and how they feel about it. Those differences only become starker when they get into an altercation later in the night, and their different ways of handling it only increase the gulf between them.
Directed and written by Iqbal Mohammed, this compelling, well-crafted short drama charts the turning point of a friendship between two young men, both facing different prospects in life. Abz and Sid are two British-Muslim men who grew up together in the same scrappy town in northern England. Yet after their graduation, they took separate paths in life: Abz went to uni, while Sid stayed behind, working in the family shop as his parents struggled.
Shot with a moody, expressionistic naturalism that captures the night's thoughtful yet emotionally explosive nature, the narrative focuses on the friends' reunification, which is uncertain and hesitant, much like England itself after Brexit. The excellent storytelling is focused on their conversation, laying down the fundamental outlines of each character, along with their long-running friendship and affection. But careful attention is paid to not just what's being said but what's being avoided, and it's apparent to both Abz and viewers that Sid isn't happy with where he's at in life, though he glosses over this at first.
This latent frustration comes out, though, when Abz and Sid get harassed for speaking a moment of Punjabi. Sid goes after the harassers, though Abz wants to just let it go. The fight isn't played up for violence, and it has the effect of pushing the tension between the old friends into the open. As Sid, actor Naveed Choudhry gives voice to an immigrant family's frustration at being always a stranger in a strange land, but also of being young, full of promise but stuck in a life that feels like a stagnant trap. Played with great sympathy and a tinge of guilt by actor Ahmed Sher Zaman, Abz has gotten luckier, but he also consciously lets go of the resentment, living his life and making the best of his opportunities.
By the end of TASBEEH, Abz and Sid seem even farther apart than ever, their paths seeming to diverge even further. And yet, through some narrative sleight-of-hand, the film ends with a sense of hope, showing just how durable and true this friendship is. It also speaks to the nature of friendship itself: how a friend holds a light for the best version of ourselves, believing in us even when we can't quite seem to do it.