battle against patriarchy

Flesh Out – Eat More to Become More Beautiful

fLESH oUT Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Verida is getting married, and in Mauritania, that means she has to fatten up before the wedding to make sure she’s as beautiful as possible. You’ll get eat all the bowls of cous cous and meat with her on her journey to becoming a big beautiful woman. Flesh Out is a well made portrait of a woman caught in a culture that clashes with modernisation.

From: Mauritania, Africa 
Watch: TBC - IMDb Page
Next: Mustang, Sand Storm, Supersize Me

Divorce: Iranian Style – Battle of the Sexes

Some of the cast from Divorce: Iranian Style

Divorce: Iranian Style Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Who said you can’t learn from film? Show them this documentary, and I guarantee you’ll know more about Iran by the time the credits appear.

From: Iran, Asia
Watch: Trailer, Watch on YouTube, Buy on Amazon
Next: Divorce: Italian Style, Beauty and the Dogs, Flesh Out

Subira – Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) 2020

Subira is a well meaning film about a black Muslim girl from a small coastal town that is sold off into marriage to an Indian man in the city. However unfortunately it’s let down by a desire to create a happy ending at all costs.

Subira is her fathers favorite child. He takes her out to sea with him and lets her play with her friends in the street. In contrast, her mother wants her to stay in the house and stay away from boys to prepare her for a good marriage. So it’s no surprise that when her father dies in a freak accident, she’s married off quickly to a rich Indian man from Nairobi.

Life in Nairobi is completely different to her life living along the coast. Nairobi is a suffocating urban environment, which the director emphasizes through the high rise buildings, cafes full of people, and private rooms. In her husband’s home she’s also expected to cook, sew, and take care of the house overseen by her husband’s uncle. Her new strict uncle-in-law and the unfamiliar environment work together to build her longing for her dead father and her past freedoms at home. Forbidden to leave the house without permission, she starts to covertly attend swimming classes in the city to get closer to her sea-faring father.

When she’s found taking swimming lessons behind her husband’s back, Subira escapes the wrath of her uncle and husband by running back to her home by the sea. Her escape is her liberation. At home she can be who she wants without having to fulfill her husband or uncle’s expectations. Ending the film with her escape would have been a victory for an independent woman fighting against a fiercely patriarchal society.

Instead, the film keeps going, intent on securing a ‘happy ending’ between Subira and her husband. The problem is, the director doesn’t give the audience any reason to expect the husband will change. When Subira leaves, he screens all of her calls, and doesn’t try to do anything to win her back. He expects her to return, after all he is the man who picked her out of poverty to share his wealth. Ultimately, Subira is the one leading the attempts to get back together, which I felt undermined her choice to run away and liberate herself. It’s a well-meaning happy ending, but it would have been more powerful if she had chosen her own independence.

Delphine’s Prayers – AFI Docs Film Festival 2021

Delphine’s Prayers features a young Cameroonian woman baring her traumatic life story for the camera. In a personal one-on-one interview she recounts the death of her mother, her rape at 13, and her subsequent abandonment by her father which led her too an early life of prostitution to support herself and her daughter. She ended up marrying an old Belgian man that brought her to Europe. She came with some hope of a better life, but that has since dissipated, leaving her in poverty again.

The whole film is shot in one room in Belgium with each of the ~10 segments centering Delphine in the middle of the frame. She’s the only character on camera in this documentary until the very last scene. She’s also the only one who speaks, discounting a few prompts from the director to guide her life stories. Without any other characters, and no cuts away from Delphine, the film’s focus is completely on Delphine, leaving no room for the viewer to get distracted from her storytelling. It makes the documentary feel much more intimate – especially as Delphine is incredibly open throughout the film – but also sometimes a bit intrusive as it feels like her traumatic life story is being exploited to represent a bigger message.

The bigger message is to present Delphine’s traumatic life as one example of a generation of young African women that have been crushed by patriarchal societies at home and abroad. This message is brought together at the end of the film in a short scene in which the director talks over a visual of Delphine braiding her hair, speaking of their friendship in Europe. Because of their different backgrounds, they wouldn’t have crossed paths at home in Cameroon. However, in Europe, they’re both just seen as Black African women – reminders of Belgium’s colonial past.

Whilst it does feel a bit exploitative at times, delving into a wide range of stories from Delphine’s traumatic life, Delphine’s Prayers does give a voice to one Black African woman in Europe to represent a part of the African immigrant experience in Europe.