The
film from this year that I have recommended more than any other is Rokhsareh
Ghaem Maghami’s “Sonita,” winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in
the World Cinema Documentary competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
It follows a teenage Afghan refugee and aspiring rapper, Sonita Alizadeh, as
she protests against her estranged family’s efforts to sell her into marriage.
Now in Iran, Sonita writes a song, “Brides for Sale,” that masterfully
articulates the systematic oppression of females in her culture. As the young
woman’s predicament becomes increasingly desperate, the director finds herself
unable to remain a passive observer, leading to a final act that is as
suspenseful as any film—nonfiction or otherwise—I’ve seen. I was frequently
reminded of Sonita’s courageous spirit while viewing several documentaries at
Toronto that chronicled the lives of people rendered pariahs because of their
passion.
Consider
Sabah, the 15-year-old girl who’s easily the most compelling subject in Philip
Gnadt and Mickey Yamine’s “Gaza Surf
Club.” As a young child living in the Gaza Strip, she garnered media
attention for her formidable skills on a surfboard, but now that she’s an
adolescent, she is no longer allowed to surf in public. This comes as a
disappointment to her father, who claims that if his girls were able to compete
in swimming competitions, they would beat everyone. Sabah’s own frustration is
palpable as she recounts how wearing a headscarf underwater would cause her to
choke, though onlookers would still scold her for not wearing it. A scene where
Sabah manages to mount her surfboard once more, with her head uncovered, serves
as the emotional highpoint of Gnadt and Yamine’s diverting yet all-too low-key
picture. Set along the gleaming beaches of Gaza, the film focuses on various
people, the majority of them men, who have embraced surfing as a way to escape
the chaotic reality of being trapped on land wedged uneasily between Israel and
Egypt.
The
opening sequence effectively juxtaposes the sounds of explosions likely caused
by airstrikes with images of crashing waves, which start to resemble clouds of
debris. Yet since much of the carnage is left offscreen, we get little sense of
the tension reverberating through the subjects’ everyday lives. The film’s
overriding tone is one of melancholy, as men reveal how surfing has become
their last chance at maintaining sanity while living in a place devoid of hope.
After struggling to obtain his visa, 23-year-old Ibrahim is unsure whether he
will ever return to Gaza after arriving in Hawaii. His original plan was to
acquire training in Hawaii that would enable him to create a surf club back
home, yet that dream seems more fanciful the further removed he is from the
Middle East. Elevating every frame is Niclas Reed Middleton’s radiant
widescreen cinematography, which vividly conveys the fleeting sense of freedom
felt by surfers before they are forced to return to shore. No wonder why they
can’t wait to catch the next wave.
Lutz
Gregor’s “Mali Blues” is similar to
“Gaza Surf Club” in that it is effortlessly watchable, yet too pleasing and
picturesque for its own good. After Islamic fundamentalists ban music from
northern towns in Mali, local musicians are forced to perform elsewhere. The
film takes place three years later, as Fatoumata Diawara (featured briefly in
Abderrahmane Sissako’s superb 2014 Oscar-nominee, “Timbuktu”) returns to the
southern part of the country, where she will perform in her first-ever home
concert. “I don’t recognize my country anymore,” Diawara confesses, while
crediting music as not only a healing force, but a uniting one capable of
bringing together Mali’s 300 diverse ethnic groups. A particularly poignant
moment occurs when Diawara sings about the dangers of genital mutilation (a
tradition unforgettably portrayed in Ousmane Sembene’s “Moolaadé”) to an
audience of Malian women.
Artists
like her embody a tolerant and peace-loving form of Islam that sorely needs
exposure at a time when the world is reeling from acts of terror. Perhaps the
most electrifying song in the film is “Explain Your Islam to Me,” in which
rapper Master Soumy rails against those who persecute and murder in the name of
his widely misunderstood religion. Unfortunately, Gregor’s film continuously
threatens to devolve into a feature-length music video, joining lyrics (which
are thankfully subtitled) with prolonged takes where the camera simply glides
through streets, immersing us in visual details that are intriguing but left
largely unexplored. Just as the surfing footage made “Gaza” worth a look,
“Mali” just manages to get by on the strength of its music, which expresses
more about Malian culture than any number of talking heads.
And
then there’s Hugh Gibson’s “The Stairs,”
a film comprised largely of talking heads that is nevertheless the strongest of
the three selections highlighted here. Like the previous two titles, this film
follows a group of people who have been pushed to the margins of society
because of a compulsion, though this one proves to be considerably more harmful
than surfing or singing. The staff at Toronto’s Regent Park Community Health
Centre includes many social workers that have a history of drug use. The
cyclical nature of addiction is not shied away from, as Gibson charts the
journeys of three staff members as they attempt to get their lives back on
track. “Relapse is a part of recovery,” says Roxanne, a former sex worker. “I
just don’t want it to be a part of mine.” Her stories are so riveting that they
could easily form the basis of a film on their own. She describes in candid
detail how she faked having sex with clients, how she sized up whether
potential clients were on the level by studying their license plate stickers,
and in a horrifying account, how she escaped her “worst date” by smashing
herself through a window and getting hit by a car.
With
an attention to nuance worthy of Kartemquin standards, Gibson finds subtle ways
of involving us within the lives of subjects, such as the engagingly talkative
Marty. As he settles into his apartment, cooking dinner while watching
“Bonanza,” we share in Marty’s relief after having spent days in a
urine-stained stairwell, a bleak period that he recounts in a self-penned song.
His long-time friend, Greg, was brutally beaten by police, though he risks
losing the belated court case with his tendency to disappear whenever he’s most
needed. When Marty’s own failure to control his short temper threatens to expel
him from his cherished community, he’s forced to grapple with how life is, in
essence, an endless struggle with no happy endings. This summation might make
Gibson’s film sound like a downbeat dirge, but it is, in fact, a deeply
inspiring look at ordinary people striving to defy the odds by helping each
other off the stairs and out the exit door. It is also worth noting that the
exquisite final shot, captured through a car’s side mirror, is as happy an
ending as one could hope for.
