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.

136

Hand of Fate – One Family Ripped Apart by Marriage Customs

Hand of Fate Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

In Hand of Fate, an underage girl is forced by her father to quit school and marry a man she doesn’t know living abroad. This greed-driven marriage splits their family unit as the patriarchy threatens to ruin another girls life.

From: The Gambia, Africa
Watch: YouTube, IMDb
Next: Mustang, Flesh Out, Dakan

Hand of Fate – Breakdown

Disclaimer: to get something out of watching Hand of Fate you’ll have to first ignore the audio quality. The volume of the dialogue and background noise chops and changes with the cuts making it hard to consistently hear what the characters are saying. Whilst this might not be too problematic for an action film like Who Killed Captain Alex? it doesn’t help this film which relies heavily on its dialogue.

If you can ignore the changes in audio quality, you’ll find a pretty entertaining family feud. At its best, the conspiring brother corrupting the once honorable father into selling his daughter’s hand in marriage is classic drama. It captures the father’s fall from respecting his wife after she gives birth to their first child, and promising a much better future for their daughter, to him reneging on his promises because of the cunning words of his money-grubbing brother. The father clearly isn’t the best bloke, but it’s fun watching him be swayed one way then the other between his brother (like the devil on his shoulder encouraging him to sell his daughter for wealth) and his wife and daughter (who he doesn’t really trust because he’s the man of the house – so what can a woman tell him). There’s enough drama to keep most viewers entertained.

That being said, there are a few conspicuous moments in which the director/producers slip in some educational messages. There’s a scene where one character gives another a mobile phone, and the gifter starts going on about how they shouldn’t drive whilst using their mobile phone. There’s another where a character suffers from a disease and a doctor arrives to berate them for not getting vaccinated when the state medics came to their town to offer it. It’s clear these kinds of messages are added to support government messaging – don’t use your mobile phone whilst driving – and – get vaccinated – and their obviousness disrupts the flow of the narrative. Hand of Fate also manages to sneak in a lot of current themes too, with European Migration, Female Circumcision, and Equal Education each playing a part in the script. These fit the script more naturally than the government messaging, but it still feels like the producers might have had a checklist for adding all these different topics to the story.

Hand of Fate is worth a watch if you’re able to overlook the audio quality and government messaging. It is a low-budget movie – clear from the quality of the production, setting, and acting – so it’s worth going into the movie not expecting much. However, once you get past all of that, you might be able to enjoy the heaps of drama and family feuding.

What to Watch Next

For more family drama featuring more forced marriages, watch Mustang from Turkey. It’s pretty upbeat for the most part, but not without a lingering melancholy that represents their fate in the hands of the patriarchy. For more films featuring forced marriages try Sand Storm, set within a Beddouin tribe in Southern Israel and Saudi Runaway, a personal documentary of one woman trying to escape hers.

For more controversial marriages, you could also try Flesh Out from Mauritania, featuring the dangerous Leblouh process where girls consume tremendous amounts of food to fatten up for their wedding.

Or if you’re looking for more family controversy set in Africa, there’s Dakan, a film about a gay relationship disrupted by homophobia in Guinea.

137

Ayinla (Nigeria) – Pan African Film Festival 2022

Ayinla is inspired by the life of Apala music legend Ayinla Omowura. Set in 1970s Abeokuta, the film charts his rise in the local, national, and international music scenes and the tribulations and ultimate tragedy that accompany his fiery character.

Whilst this film is a dramatized story about Ayinla, it starts with a number of home-video style interviews from local politicians and his friends. These are all real people talking, not actors, and their interviews are used to set up the importance of Ayinla. He’s an artist whose renown never hit the astronomical highs of Fela Kuti or King Sunny Ade, but with these interviews and the dramatized story of his life, director, and fellow Abeokuta resident, Tunde Kelani shows he’s worthy of international recognition.

The highlight of Ayinla is the music. Whilst not all of the lyrics are subtitled, you can tell that Ayinla was a playful and political lyricist from the songs that are. They’re all cut into the movie pretty smoothly and give the film the star soundtrack to promote his legacy. Kelani also shoots Abeokuta beautifully, making it appear to be a picturesque tropical city with greenery and Ulumo Rock dominating the drone shots. Another plus is that the entire film is shot in Yoruba, staying true to the region the film is based in, instead of opting for English in an attempt to appeal to an international audience.

The only downsides of this movie is that it doesn’t feel complete. It feels more like a bunch of episodes of Ayinla’s life that have been pieced together. The only thin plot-line is that of Ayinla preparing for his trip to London, but even this only begins to guide the story in the final part of the movie. As pointed out by Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku for afrocritik the film also introduces a lot of plot points that are never developed – such as Ayinla’s pregnant wife. Luckily the music for the most part covers up for the lack of plot.

For anyone into Nigerian music, or biopic style movies on making it in the music industry, Ayinla is worth a watch. It’s a decent tribute to both Ayinla Omowura and Abeokuta, the colorful city that both the director and the music star share.

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

138

Simshar – A Local and International Tragedy at Sea

Simshar Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

In Simshar, 11 year old Theo’s first trip with his Maltese fisherman family goes terribly wrong when the ship sinks far from land in the Mediterranean Sea. Meanwhile, Alex a medic on a Turkish merchant vessel that rescues a group of migrants in trouble gets stuck on the ship as the surrounding countries wage a bureaucratic war over who should take them in.

From: Malta, Europe
Watch: IMDb, JustWatch, Kanopy
Next: The Black Pin, The Courtyard of Songs, The Insult

Simshar Breakdown

There’s plenty going on in Simshar. Perhaps too much. Instead of focusing on the Simshar incident or the migrant crisis, it tries to connect both in two separate stories. However, their connection never feels strong enough to make Simshar a compelling melodrama or political drama.

Instead of being a movie that examines the migrant crisis through the Simshar incident, this movie is a dramatized depiction of the Simshar incident featuring another narrative tied to the migrant crisis. Whilst they both are related to the sea and Malta, the director doesn’t nearly do enough to tie the two stories. It feels like the migrant crisis pieces are included to make the film more relevant to the political climate in which it was made.

Even the dates of the film feel off. Whilst the Simshar incident happened in 2008, the migrant crisis didn’t fully explode until slightly later in the 21st century. This is not to say that there weren’t African migrants traversing the Mediterranean in 2008 – there were – but it was not nearly as well covered in European news in 2008 as in 2014 when this film was made. Making this movie about an international immigration crisis, and not just about a fishing tragedy, probably made Simshar a lot more marketable on the film festival circuit than if it just focused on the fishing tragedy.

However, if you’re into Mediterranean melodrama, the Simshar incident narrative might appeal to you. It’s sepia tinted scenes backed by a slightly whimsical accordion soundtrack evokes a romanticized depiction of Maltese life. It almost feels a bit nostalgic too, as if it’s looking fondly back on a time in Malta before the migrant crisis and foreign rules (fishing restrictions) threatened it. The no-nonsense Maltese family that clings onto their way of life despite national and international fishing restrictions runs against the change caused by the migrant crisis.

The romanticized portrayal of Maltese life feels slightly problematic in contrast with the underdeveloped migrant characters in the migrant crisis narrative. The Maltese characters are given screen time to build their characters through dialogue and actions, whereas the migrants are only spoken to. It means that viewers naturally sympathize with the traditional Maltese people and not the migrants as they’re actually humanized on screen. This is most evident in a scene in which one black migrant shouts “you don’t know what we’ve been through” to white Maltese hecklers. We, like the Maltese characters don’t know what they’ve been through, and unfortunately the film never tries to answer this either. As a result, Simshar’s attempt to cover the migrant crisis, whilst also dramatizing the Simshar incident feels half hearted, leaving both narratives feeling flat.

What to Watch Next

If you like warm portrayals of quaint Southern European life, check out Cinema Paradiso and The Courtyard of Songs. Both fully immerse the viewer without trying to make political statements. Or if you’d really like to see film that does manage to integrate a political statement into a small town Mediterranean film, try the gentrification narrative of Montenegro’s The Black Pin.