Take Off”… A beautifully made rescue drama where the personal struggles score over the logistical ones

When we first meet Sameera (Parvathy), she’s missing a certificate. She’s at the Department of Health, applying for a job as a nurse in Iraq, but they won’t give her the necessary papers unless she produces that certificate. She screams, in frustration, at an official. She calls her son, asks him to search their computer. A colleague, Shaheed (Kunchacko Boban) offers to help, but she refuses. Later, she grudgingly accepts. We’ve already been told, at the beginning, that the events in this film are based on the 2014 crisis, when nurses from Kerala found themselves captives of the IS in Tikrit – so why this obsessive account of the hunt for a missing document, something that seems, at best, a small note on the margins of a much-larger story?