Film Difficulty 2

To help you ease your way into our world, we have devised a the film difficulty ranking system to rate the difficulty of each film reviewed on our site. The easiest to watch films (the Rom-Coms and Superhero flicks that you watch anyway) will have a rating of 1. Foreign language films automatically add one point, as do black and white films, and films with strange and hard to follow plots. Welcome to Film Difficulty 2.

Film Difficulty Ranking 2: These films are perfect introductions to those new to foreign films. These one’s may have subtitles, or be in black and white, but these films are all easy to follow and enjoy.

For the next step, check out Film Difficulty Ranking 3.

101

Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) – AFI Fest 2020

Eyimofe is split into two stories. One features Mofe, a middle aged man who works as an electrician and lives with his sister and her children. The other features Rosa, a young woman who works as a hairdresser that takes care of her younger, pregnant sister. They share two obvious things in common. Firstly, they’re both trying to escape Lagos by obtaining visas to emigrate to Europe. Secondly, they’re both struggling to get by. Together, they represent a desire to escape poverty.

However, their visas definitely don’t seem legitimate. Mofe tries to obtain his from a guy with a computer that works at a stall in the middle of the street. Rosa’s method is worse, as she’s found a local mafiosa woman that has offered to get her and her sister visas in exchange for their baby. Their methods are symbolic of the global apartheid that restrict the underprivileged from freedom of movement. As we saw in AFI Fest’s I Carry You With Me and Farewell Amor, the legal routes for obtaining a visa to ‘the West’ are extremely limited for those without money.

Their lives aren’t just affected by their inability to get visas. They’re also stuck in the bureaucracy of inadequate social welfare at home. After Mofe’s sister dies, he gets caught in a long process of different forms and fees he has to fill out and pay before her death can be resolved. We see the whole process, from paying the morgue where the body is interred through to settling the inheritance. Likewise, Rosa has to fork out endless fees and debts to help out her pregnant sister. In contrast, life for the middle and upper class is a breeze. Mofe’s wealthy father can hire an expensive lawyer to swoop in and claim his daughter’s inheritance even if he hasn’t seen her for 10 years. And Rosa’s new American boyfriend can suddenly ghost her when she needs him for financial support. The wealthy can take advantage of the underprivileged (Mofe and Rosa) when they’re up, and avoid them as soon as they’re asked to help.

Eyimofe is a two part film which captures the wealth and class divide in Lagos. When you’re doing OK, you’re allowed independence and respect, but as soon as you meet hardship, everyone avoids you or takes advantage.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

102

Luxor – AFI Fest 2020

Hanna starts Luxor looking like the typical ‘gone abroad to find yourself’ young white adult. She’s dressed in loose clothing, feels an other worldly connection to the foreign place, and sleeps around. However, whilst her character never completely loses this image in the film, our interpretation of her changes.

Instead of opening up, she becomes more closed emotionally as the film progresses. It doesn’t feel like we learn more about her. Scene by scene, her face becomes a canvas of lonely stoicism, even after she meets her former lover, Sultan. The only moment she breaks this facade in the first part of the film is when she automatically switches into ‘work-mode’ to help a tourist that faints. Otherwise she’s made a shell around her personality to defend herself against hardships.

Luxor could have slipped into the trap of exoticizing a foreign location from the perspective of an outsider. Whilst it does turn Ancient Egypt into a place for a white person to contemplate (side note: shout out to the British Museum), it feels self aware of what it’s doing. Hanna finds connections on her own organically, and other connections to the land through the eyes of a local Sultan. It also recognizes that tourists do visit Luxor to exoticize ‘the other’ by representing them in the spiritual group of westerners that followed the Grateful Dead, and the obnoxious American tourist from the opening. Again it just about avoids the trap of falling into the problematic ‘white girl finds herself in exotic location’.

Instead it uses the environment, and Hanna’s connection to it, to evoke nostalgia for Hanna’s past life with Sultan. We learn that this isn’t the first time she’s been to Luxor (having been here with Sultan earlier in life). Now she’s older, she has experienced trauma (that is only hinted at in the film), and her mind is in a different place. She’s seeing the same locations, but in a different light. Everything feels familiar, shown in her confident exploration of the place on her own, but it also feels different, as shown in her inquisitive interaction with the ruins. Her new connection to the place suggests that her return may be fated, and that she may have found her home and future.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

103

New Order (Nuevo Orden) – AFI Fest 2020

New Order starts with a chaotic montage of images. There’s a modern art painting, a naked lady covered in green paint, and plenty of lifeless bodies. Each image flashes up on screen for half a second as bold orchestral music plays in the background. It’s a disorientating and sensationalist start which gives us a sign of the chaos to come.

The film relaxes for 15 minutes after the opening as we enter the safety bubble of an upper class wedding in Mexico City. There’s a lot of mingling and small talk. It’s a world which feels a lot like the exclusive Mexico City world shown in The Good Girls. Everyone is focused on their business and completely oblivious to the lives of the public outside of their social sphere.

However, some ominous signs start to appear that connect to the chaotic opening montage which the film uses to build unease. The tap water starts running green; the judge for the wedding is late; and one guest appears with a green splodge on her shirt. Meanwhile the bride disappears to help out one of their former maids. The outside world is getting closer to their upper class bubble.

It’s not long before the bubble bursts and some outsiders splattered in green climb over the walls surrounding their property, symbolic of the wealth divide. At this point everything suddenly goes mad as the security guards turn on the wealthy family and start raiding the house for valuables alongside the home invaders. It’s not particularly clear who the invaders are, but from who they’re targeting it seems like it’s an anti-rich uprising. From this point on the film descends into nihilistic chaos that reminded me of Todd Phillips Joker. It’s not really clear what the nihilism is supposed to represent besides a vague: rich are bad, and the poor victimized and it’s never really clear why everything is happening. As a result, the second half comes across as a bit sensationalist and provocative and without too much depth to back up the action.

If you’d like to see some Mexican political movies with a bit more depth check out the satirical critique of Mexican politics in Luis Estrada’s The Perfect Dictatorship, and the horrifyingly real nihilism in Amat Escalante’s Heli. There’s also Children of Men and Sons of Denmark if you want to watch some more chaotic near future dystopian movies.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

104

Jebel Nyoka – Early Marriage vs. Education in South Sudan

Jebel Nyoka Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

Jebel Nyoka is a budget South Sudanese movie free to watch on YouTube that touches on the patriarchy and forced marriage. It follows a teenage girl living outside of the capital city in South Sudan. Conflict arises when her parents want her to get married instead of allowing her to finish her studies.

From: South Sudan, Africa
Watch: YouTube, IMDb
Next: The Hand of Fate, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Dhalinyaro

Jebel Nyoka – The Breakdown

Disclaimer: whilst the audio quality is more consistent than other films shot with few resources such as The Hand of Fate, it does contain a very repetitive backing track. It sounds a bit like stock filler for an 80s educational show, and unfortunately is often played over the diegetic sound and dialogue of the movie regardless of the context of the scene (playing over a rape scene as well as over family conversation). So before watching this film, be prepared to fight an urge to mute the audio from time to time.

Jebel Nyoka does have honorable intentions in the screenplay though, which touches on both the patriarchy, the lack of resources for education, and underage marriage. Kiden, our teenage female protagonist has to deal with all these issues – fighting her family and their wish for her to get married instead of supporting her education. The film sides with her and a girl’s right to education by showing her fight against her parents and marriage. However, it feels blind to the power of the patriarchy it unwittingly presents. It positions Kiden’s mother as the villain of the movie – presenting her as the driving force behind Kiden’s underage marriage even though her father holds the position of power in the family. She has to talk to crouch down to talk to him sitting in his chair, and whilst the father agrees to marry their daughter, he blames her when things go awry for pushing him to do it. Jebel Nyoka is quick to blame the female characters for problems held in place by the patriarchy.

It also features a lot of male characters that take charge of Kiden’s life without considering her perspective. Her father is one example, as is her prospective husband, but even the male characters that are presented as ‘good’ take advantage of her. The head of the orphanage is a prime example of this. Whilst he takes her in and provides her with an education, he also ships her off to another family looking for another girl to help out around the house (ironically so their own daughter can focus on her own studies). This action is never questioned, and ultimately the adopted father and the head of the orphanage become the heroes of the film. The focus on portraying benevolence in the men of Jebel Nyoka undermines the positive female story the director tries to create.

Therefore, despite honorable intentions, Jebel Nyoka’s message feels a bit empty. It highlights problems within South Sudanese society (such as underage marriage, poverty and education) without examining their root cause. Instead of looking deeper into these issues, or making a film about Kiden’s perspective, Jebel Nyoka focuses on the men around her, making them the saviors of the movie.

What to Watch Next

For a film which examines the patriarchy from a female student’s perspective, we strongly recommend watching Dhalinyaro from Djibouti. It follows a group of three high school friends facing different problems at home as the exam season starts.

If you’re looking for more low budget African films that deal with the patriarchy and forced marriage, you could watch The Hand of Fate from The Gambia.

Or if you want to watch more African films about kids using their intelligence to find a way out of poverty, try The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

105

Where I Come From (Cameroon) – Pan African Film Festival 2022

11 year old Mambi relies on her luck at gambling to pay off her father’s debts and save money for education in Where I Come From. However, as her father’s own gambling addiction gets worse, Mambi sacrifices her own dreams to protect her father.

The first thing I learned from watching Mambi was that English is spoken in Cameroon. All of the previous films I’ve seen from Cameroon were in French so I ignorantly assumed the whole country spoke French. The reality is that whilst around 80% of the country’s population are in French speaking regions, the 20% in the North, along the Nigerian border, speak English. The English speaking region has recently become a hotbed for film production, earning it the nickname ‘Collywood’ to differentiate itself from Nigeria’s neighboring Nollywood. Three of the industry’s films have even been bought up by Netflix: the award winning The Fisherman’s Diary, A Man for the Weekend, and Broken. Where I Come From might be hoping to join them soon.

Unfortunately the plot feels a bit too similar to a host of other African films that focus on poverty and promote education and stable family life such as Hand of Fate, Jebel Nyoka, and Shaina. Even though their situations all seem impossibly bleak, education is presented as a panacea for everything. It almost comes across as a government PSA because it feels so unrealistic given the protagonists’ circumstances. The promotion of gambling (and luck) as a solution also felt a bit off. Whenever Mambi gambles, inspirational, uplifting music starts as if it’s encouraging her to gamble. Promoting education and the luck of gambling in the same movie doesn’t match up.

Despite the cookie-cutter plot, Where I Come From is at least memorable for it’s brilliant lead performance from 11 year old Faith Fidel. She deservedly was nominated for Most Promising Actor at the African Movie Academy Awards last year and should be an actor to look out for in the future. It’s also worth noting that 95% of the film’s crew were under 30, so look out for more from Takong Delvis and his team in future.

Check back to our Pan African Film Festival 2022 page for more reviews coming out of the 30th edition of the festival.