★★★

A film equally as confounding as it is engrossing, Ayar is an experimental hybrid of documentary filmmaking and fictionalized storytelling that works as often as it does not. By detailing an immigrant’s experience in America, with the backdrop of COVID-19 and with the fog of mental health challenges hanging over the proceedings, Ayar is unlike most movies you have seen before.

Directed by Floyd Russ and starring Ariana Ron Pedrique as the titular main character, early on we see Ayar lugging a freshly purchased birthday cake around with her, in the hopes she can share it with her 5-year-old daughter Jasmine (Calliah Sophie Estrada). When she arrives at her mother Renata’s house, she is told it is unsafe and essentially gets turned around and told to leave. 

Pedrique, who co-wrote the film with Russ and Vilma Vega (who portrays Renata), is one of those actors the camera simply cannot turn away from. A former child star in Venezuela, Pedrique steels her way through this labor-of-love production with a striking performance that shows a young mother unraveling, with the strain of finding work, seeing her daughter, realizing her dreams of becoming an actress or performer, and surviving a pandemic weighing mightily on her shoulders. 

When Ayar focuses on the story at the heart of the piece, the movie works quite well. However, Russ, who first gained fame with the Netflix documentary short Zion about a legless, high school amateur wrestler in 2018, inserts fourth wall-breaking moments where the actors talk directly to the camera and share their personal stories. When a new character is introduced on the fictionalized side, we see a flurry of images of the actor in their real life, often from childhood to adulthood. 

While curious and intriguing, Russ’ documentary concept never congeals to the overall cinematic experience. To see Pedrique or Vega act together in a volatile, heated mother/daughter scripted argument, and then cut to one of them talking in a clip from a casting audition or Zoom call with producers, is just too jarring for a film like this to contain appropriately. 

A good, potentially great movie lives within Ayar. Pedrique, Vega, and Russ explore the perils of trust, abandonment, and how people use one another for selfish and personal gain. The film also eloquently shows us the pain and anguish of being a stranger in a strange land. Perhaps that is enhanced, in theory, by the documentary footage, but it proves to be something of an unforced error for a concept that packs great potential for a lasting impression.

AYAR was viewed as part of the Fourth Annual North Bend Film Festival.