‘A Band of Dreamers and a Judge’ Review: Iranian Treasure-Hunting Doc

A film that pivots around a court case about its own making, buried treasure documentary “A Band of Dreamers and a Judge” features hints of allure that eventually wane. Shot in Iran, where unauthorized excavations remain illegal, Hesam Eslami’s chronicle of a group of treasure hunters is an occasionally intense process piece that often loses steam, especially during its attempts at intimate portraiture. The movie’s grave-robbing subjects lead full and complex lives, but it seldom depicts them with the richness they deserve.

Eslami’s framing device is unique. The story begins with his cross-examination by a female judge, who questions his motives in filming footage a year prior, of a band of middle-aged friends obsessed with finding lost antiquities in the mountains of Savadkooh. This year-old footage makes up most of the movie’s runtime, plenty of which is dedicated to the group’s personal lives. Unfortunately, the more its lens remains trained on their behind-the-scenes dynamics, the less focused it feels, thanks to its numerous lengthy, static scenes of interpersonal drama that pale in comparison to its riveting depictions of Indiana Jones-esque adventuring (minus the grand theatrics).

“A Band of Dreamers and a Judge” is front loaded with nerve-wracking guerilla filmmaking, with moments so gripping that the rest of the movie seldom measures up. During illicit nighttime digs — backed by Younes Eskandari’s sharp, eerie, horror-adjacent score — cinematographer Hamed Hoseini Sangari trains the camera’s gaze not on the group themselves, but on the harsh and hilly landscape they traverse, lit by makeshift flashlights that illuminate only slivers of space at a time.

Scenes of recon and eventual rock clearing are shot without much motion blur, creating a jittery effect akin to the D-Day landing in “Saving Private Ryan.” The frame is imbued with volatility. As the group discusses the dangers they face, and the fates of previous explorers, it feels like anything can happen.

When Eslami first switches gears and introduces his human subjects, some of this intensity remains. Through claustrophobic shots of their minor haul over the years — from ancient pottery to various metallic trinkets uncovered from the dirt — the specter of the hunt for gold continues to linger. However, the further the movie’s focus wanders from the legal and personal risks, towards the private lives of its faux archeologists (and towards a handful of security guards on patrol in the area), the less interesting it becomes.

It grows increasingly scattered as it widens in scope, telling stories of the digger’s ailing relatives and pregnant spouses (who we seldom see), as it attempts to deepen our understanding of their financial and personal motives. But none of these reasons for their illegal exhumation, in the hopes of finding mythical riches, are ever presented with nearly the same verve as the act itself. The film is at its most tantalizing when focusing on landscapes and harsh terrains, as though the camera were embodying a sense of misguided adventure.

The question of whether they’ll find any buried treasures — or if these are even real in the first place — permeates just enough of the movie’s personal scenes to keep things mildly interesting. “A Band of Dreamers and a Judge” is as much about the act of excavation as it is about the belief in the act, a paradigm that transfers over to its meta-textual court scenes as well, which simultaneously reckon with the question of Eslami’s own belief in the images he captures. However, even as the movie becomes about its own making, its inquiry into documentarian ethics is seldom rigorous enough to enhance its story.

Much of what the movie wants to say is contained aesthetically within its initial night-time scenes, via close ups of rocks being shifted, and haunting POV shots of dangerous caverns littered with possibility. The mystique and peril of these excavations are made self-evident so powerfully, and early on, that the numerous verbal arguments and justifications that follow simply fade into white noise. Ironically, “A Band of Dreamers and a Judge” fails to excavate its subjects with nearly the same level of intrigue or aplomb.