1.
Beans
2020, Tracey Deer

The plot: It's 1990. Over 78 days, a violent standoff unfolds between Mohawk protesters and the Quebec authorities. At issue was the plan to expand a golf course and develop townhouses on disputed land that included a Mohawk burial ground. The 12-year-old Tekehentahkhwa (nicknamed Beans, and played by Kiawenti:io Tarbell) is caught right up in this, along with the rest of her family. She's literally in the middle of everything as rocks are thrown, insults are hurled, and she is forced to evacuate with her younger sister and her pregnant mother (Rainbow Dickerson), while her father (Joel Montgrand) joins the barricades.

The odds: There were arms-bearers on the Mohawk side, but the force deployed by the government was truly enormous (4,000 soldiers and the army's "entire national stockpile of barbed wire"). White Quebecois townspeople also rioted with the aim aim of pressuring the military to go in and "crush" the uprising. Broader Canadian solidarity with the Mohawk, on the other hand, put a brake on violence by the government, and eventually the situation was debated in Parliament, and a resolution reached. The expansion plans were halted, and in 2001 an act of Parliament confirmed that the land belonged to the Mohawk; however, it was not officially established as a reserve, and no organized transfer has taken place. A Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples reported its findings in 1996, chief among them the need to completely overhaul the relationship between Canada's Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Most of the recommendations did not result in implementation. Same horrible odds, then, that millions of other Indigenous peoples face across the world...


As always, this is the other side of Canada: British Columbia, 2004

Pluses: I came to this story cold, and found the film's depictions -- especially its insertion of archival news footage -- nothing short of horrifying. How hate-filled and brutal we can be to each other... But the central character, whom we watch trying not only to find her footing in the terrible events surrounding her, but also to figure out her identity as a young woman on the point of emerging from childhood, is highly engaging. She softens the story for us, without blunting it. So we wonder with her (and her parents) whether this posh white private school, where the principal can't even get her tongue around Beans's real name (and Beans lets her right off the hook by offering her nickname), is going to be the right thing for her; and we worry about her as she gets caught up with a band of tough kids, and learns to act "hard"; and we grieve with her when she learns that ethnic solidarity doesn't rule out attempts at sexual exploitation.

Minuses: None, really. I was just sorry that the feisty Beans ends up going to that school... But by the end, she's introducing herself with her real name, and she's not offering any nickname cop-outs, so perhaps she's just what they need to sort them out...

Curiosities: The film-maker, also a Mohawk, experienced this battle at first hand when she was 12. She found herself in a car being pelted by rocks -- exactly the situation she puts Beans in. "For me," she says, "that was such a pinnacle moment in shaping who I am. Up to that point, I didn't know hatred, to experience it or to feel it... Once the Oka Crisis hit, the reality [hit] that my difference made life dangerous outside of the safety of my home and my community. That was a very rude awakening. It was shattering, really, to the innocence I had up until that point." In another interview, she explains how the events ushered in "a number of very, very dark years" for her, during which she even contemplated suicide. Part of the rationale for the film was to share that there is a way through these traumas.



2.
The Perfect Candidate
2020, Haifaa al-Mansour

The plot: We're in Saudi Arabia, and Dr. Maryam Alsafan (Mila Al Zahrani) is driving (much more remarkable there than it would be elsewhere, of course) to the clinic where she works. A terrible road surface outside the building, which -- despite all her complaints -- continues to impede user access; the egregiously sexist prejudice exhibited by an elderly patient; and the back-up this old fossil receives from Maryam's male colleague -- these are just a few of the many obstacles Maryam encounters in her daily life. Desperate to get to a conference in Dubai, and finding out at the last minute that her travel permit (which has to be signed by a male "guardian") is incomplete, she appeals to a cousin. But access to him, according to his officious secretary, is only for candidates standing for election to the city council. So Maryam signs up as a candidate...

The odds: Well, some of them have come up already, because battling against the odds is what being female in Saudi Arabia is all about, it seems. Politically, Maryam faces an uphill struggle. Responses from the audience at an all-female fundraiser include: "My husband will kill me if I vote for you," and "I hope you win, but I don’t vote." Haifaa al-Mansour herself -- the first woman to make a Saudi Arabian feature film (released in 2012) -- is something of a poster child for fighting against the odds. She had to shoot that first movie from the back of a van, using a walkie-talkie, because "it would have been impossible for a woman to be seen openly on the street giving orders to men". Even so, she encountered death threats... For this film, she could work in the open. Small mercies...



Pluses: I really enjoyed this film. It offers great insight into women's experiences in Saudi Arabia in all sorts of contexts -- at wedding parties (Maryam's sister Selma is a wedding videographer), on the campaign trail, at work, and at home. I liked that it showed us, alongside the obstacles, strong women who just refuse to be defeated by their patriarchal surroundings, and tuned us in to the benefit of small victories. But it's not solely focused on women. The reason Maryam's father, Abdulaziz (Khalid Abdulrahim), can't sort out her travel permit is that he is an oud player, and currently away on a tour -- which risks being disrupted or curtailed because of radicals who don't approve of music... (Abdulrahim, incidentally, is a musician in real life.) Despite its weighty themes, this is not a whiny movie. It shows you the difficulties, but it does so with lots of humour. I also liked that it gave us not some fuzzy happy ending, but just the glimpse of a way forward.

Minuses: None of any significance, given the context and the constraints.

Curiosities: Al-Mansour herself is a fascinating figure: "She grew up in small conservative town, and describes herself as a shy kid, the eighth of 12 children in a liberal house. Her father was a poet. Where does the rebellious streak come from? 'My parents,' she answers quickly. 'We didn’t have money, but I feel really privileged. I was respected. My father and my mother never told me: "Because you are a woman you can’t do this."' Music filled the house, and as teenager she watched Jackie Chan and Bollywood movies. 'Whenever I told people at school I listened to music, they’d be like: "You’re going straight to hell. I don’t want to play with you." So, I felt like an outsider.'..." And on a comparative note, I recently came across this on female candidates' strategies in Indonesia...



3.
When Pomegranates Howl
2020, Granaz Moussavi

The plot: Hewad (Arafat Faiz), a resident of Kabul, is just nine. But his father is dead ("martyred" in one of the bomb attacks and air raids that punctuate the film), so to support his family (mother, grandmother, and younger sister) and try to stop his mother being forced into marrying her brother-in-law, he wheels a heavy barrow around the rough, steep streets, selling vegetables, playthings, pomegranates, and amulets as best he can. He is adept at talking, dealing, and dreaming big (of being a movie star). After he narrowly misses death when an explosion rips apart the wedding where he is serving pomegranate juice, he meets photographer Andrew Quilty (an actual photojournalist and war correspondent). Asked by Quilty to document his life, and given a camera with which to do it, he assumes his film dream is coming true and he will soon be rubbing shoulders with his silver-screen idols. But the friends he gathers and trains in pursuit of this objective become the object of real hostilities when their mock battle scene ("Act like in American films") draws the suspicion of the Australian military in the helicopter patrolling overhead. Hewad is shot, along with another boy. The final scenes show us Quilty arriving at the funeral, retreating amid the heartbreaking wails and accusations of the women, and finally hurling his camera away.

The odds: This movie was inspired by real events, including airstrikes on weddings (one in 2008, for example, killed 34 women and children), and the shooting, in 2013, of two boys who were mistaken for insurgents. So the odds stacked against these kids are enormous. Not only do they fight against privation, and lack of education, and the (enforced) premature assumption of responsibility, but the ever-present conflict (the sound of helicopters is always chuntering in the background as the story unfolds) constantly threatens to wipe out their lives, and the lives of those around them.



Pluses: Filmed in Kabul, it brings to vivid, lovable life an individual who was literally written off by the authorities. Right at the end of the movie, we see the actual clip where the Australian defence minister regrets the loss of life, but reassures the public that the compensation will not be onerous: "We're talking in the hundreds, rather than the thousands." Maybe he wasn't thinking... But how coldly appalling... As David Abbatescianni puts it, Hewad's death, for the Australian government, "represents a loss that can be compensated by an estimate of his human capital, and his value, sadly, is close to zero". This is the incident that inspired Moussavi to make the film.

Minuses: The photographer's role in the plot comes across as more ambivalent than I think Moussavi means it to be... She says in another interview that she didn't want the killing to be "the only representation of Australia, because ... that's just one aspect. The other aspect, that is very valuable to me, is the Australia that is sensitive towards the rest of the world. That side of Australia needed a representation in this film, and I decided that should be the journalist." It was Quilty's values as a Kabul-based freelance that made Moussavi approach him to play himself in the movie. He was obviously happy with the script. But you can't help feeling a little queasy about the way "sensitive" Australia -- or, more broadly, the "sensitive" West -- comes off here. The inevitable power disparity just can't be wished away. Guy Lodge assesses it like this, "Where the foreigner sees the boys as perfectly emblematic of Afghan hardship for his National Geographic-style feature, Hewad sees in his lens an invitation to celebrity. It’s a quietly heartbreaking mismatch of perception and reality that steadily builds to the very opposite of a fairytale ending, as well as a sharp undermining of the white-savior trope suggested by the very premise."

Curiosities: The film was largely self-funded, and Moussavi put her life-savings into it: "The system," she says, "doesn’t support a film like this to be made ... because there are narratives that Australian audiences should not be exposed to." Which, if true, is a sad thing.