Some documentaries announce their themes loudly; others simply sit beside their subject and watch. Naveen Chaubal’s “Pinball” belongs firmly to the latter camp, a quiet, observational coming-of-age portrait that trusts its young subject to reveal himself in his own time. It is a sincere and often tender film, even if its very commitment to drift and uncertainty becomes, in the end, as much a limitation as a virtue.
Its subject is Yosef Al Windawi, who at the age of four was among the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who fled their country after 2004, passing through Egypt before his family received asylum in the unlikely surrounds of suburban Louisville, Kentucky. Now a teenager, Yosef is caught between worlds: an aspiring professional footballer weighing college decisions, athletic training and an uneasy relationship with the American dream his family crossed continents to reach. The film follows him across a loose stretch of ordinary days, at school, on the pitch, in the car, and in conversation with his father and friends.
Chaubal’s approach is patient and unobtrusive, letting Yosef address the camera gently and letting the contradictions of his situation surface without commentary. He longs for a homeland he can barely remember, and the film is at its most affecting when it lingers on that ache, the sense of a young man whose body, as he puts it, does not quite feel at home where it has landed. Video calls with relatives and the quiet pressures of family, to take school seriously, to stay out of trouble, to learn the everyday skills of adulthood, paint a recognisable picture of second-generation life lived between gratitude and unease.
The difficulty is that Yosef himself is, by the film’s own design, something of a drifter, a young man who cannot quite settle on what he wants or how to pursue it, and the documentary mirrors that restlessness a little too faithfully. For long passages it meanders without momentum, and the absence of shape that so honestly reflects its subject’s uncertainty also leaves the film feeling unfocused and, frankly, overlong. There is a leaner, sharper work somewhere inside this one, and it would likely have landed its emotional beats with more force.
Where “Pinball” does connect is in its specificity and its warmth. For anyone who has grown up as the child of an immigrant family, caught between an inherited homeland and an adopted one, much of Yosef’s experience will ring quietly true, and Chaubal affords him a rare, unhurried space in which to figure himself out. It is an intimate and compassionate portrait, free of sensationalism and genuinely fond of its subject.
Taken as a whole, “Pinball” is a well-meaning and humane documentary that will resonate most with viewers who see their own story reflected in Yosef’s, while the more casual observer may find it earnest but undramatic, and a good deal longer than its slender material can comfortably sustain. It is a film of real heart and honest feeling, if not quite enough momentum to carry its running time.