The Cambria Film Festival, running February 5-9, has given SLO Review the opportunity to preview many of the more than 80 full-length and short films that make up its 2025 program schedule. All-access passes, live screening only passes, and passes to view films virtually after the festival are available now.
Family Is Everything
As the name suggests, the main characters are trying to find their way home in Yousaf Ali Khan’s film No Way Home.
Set in the Giantlands, a forgotten industrial wasteland near a small town in the United Kingdom, the 106-minute movie depicts 10-year-old Ryan’s search for the dad he never knew and a better life. He finds an alleged terrorist injured and hiding out in a shipping container and befriends the man, who he hopes is his father.
The music’s soothing cadences set the tone for the adventures of the pre-teen. We find out that the only friends Ryan have had are wild animals, pretend aliens, and one young girl from the neighborhood.
That is, until Ryan meets the injured man and is instantly drawn to him as he hopes and dreams that he has found his father. He asks his mother if his father is bearded, and she says it is possible. Ryan brings the man food and medicine so the man can get better. The friendship blossoms between the two even though they don’t speak the same language.
The food and medication work as we see the man healing, and the two share adventures such as learning how to cook and how to whistle. Ryan keeps suggesting to the man that everything will be better once the man returns home—that is, to Ryan’s home. But the man is trying to get home to his relatives in a town about 200 miles away. Ryan promises to phone the relatives but breaks his promise.
In one compelling scene, the man shares with Ryan that family is everything, and that he has been a terrorist to help his family and others achieve freedom. In another, Ryan and the man have a water fight, revealing that the boy is finally able to take life less seriously and enjoy some time with another person.
Reviews of the movie have applauded it as “culturally significant” and “a poignant exploration of identity and experience.” It has justifiably earned international recognition from other film festivals and won the main prize of the second edition of PriGlobal 2024.
Screenings of No Way Home (run time 106 minutes), sponsored by Dixie Walker and Ted & Suzy Siegler, are at 1 p.m. Friday, February 7 and at 10 a.m. Saturday, February 8.