coming of age - Page 4 of 7

Freedom Fields – Meet the Libyan Women’s Football Team

Freedom Fields Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Freedom Fields follows a group of Libyan women trying to start up the women’s Libyan football team. They’ve all grown up watching sports stars like Messi and Ronaldo and want to be just like them. However, in a fiercely patriarchal society, their dreams are under threat from extremist preachers and their conservative followers.

From: Libya, Africa
Watch: Trailer
Next: Wadjda, The Eagle Huntress, Girlhood

Lane 4 – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Lane 4, Amanda is most comfortable in the water. Lacking her parents’ attention at home, swimming is the only thing she has. But she’s not alone in the pool. Priscila, the star of her swim team, becomes her friend and rival in the pool and in life.

The film starts with Amanda completely still, floating underwater in the fetal position in a swimming pool. By comparing the swimming pool to a womb, the opening image shows Amanda’s desire to return to the womb, to escape all the stresses of her daily life (see Freud’s Thanatos Instinct). In the pool, she can escape from her parents who don’t understand her, the social pressures of maintaining a ‘cool’ image, and her own growing pains. However, unfortunately for her, she cannot stay underwater forever. Eventually she has to surface for air. When she breaks from the fetal position and swims to the surface, it’s symbolic of her second birth. It’s her rebirth as a woman and a world full of expectations for her.

The scenes of Amanda underwater are the corner stones of Lane 4. Each one of them indicate her underlying desires. First, as mentioned above, she’s reborn from a girl into a woman, even though she desires to return to the simplicity of the womb. Secondly, she dives to the bottom of the pool on her own to reluctantly collect a hairband given to her by her mother. This image symbolizes her reluctance to grow up and tie back her hair – something that her mum thinks she should do to show off her ears. The third underwater scene shows her diving towards Priscila’s boyfriend. This scene starts to reveal her desire to assume Priscila’s position as the coolest girl on the swim team which are confirmed in the last underwater scene to end the film. Above water, Amanda is mostly silent and rarely reveals what she thinks, but underwater, she reveals all of her underlying desires and urges.

Lane 4 contains most of the typical coming of age film tropes, such as:

Dealing with absent parents.
Dealing with friends who have grown up before you.
Dealing with a dad that still sees you as a little girl.
Jealousy of the popular girl at school.
Wanting to go out with most attractive boy at school.
Her first period.

As a result, it will feel very familiar to other coming of age films, such as Alba. The main thing that sets apart Lane 4 from other films is that it’s set within a competitive swim club. This environment, and the underwater scenes that reveal her hidden desires, made Lane 4 one of the most memorable films at SBIFF.

The Dead and the Others – Running From Your Destiny

The Dead and the Others Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

The Dead and the Others follows Ihjãc, a 15 year old indigenous Krahô father. After his own father dies, he starts to hear voices and receives a visit from the legendary macaw, a signal of the start of his transformation into a shaman. However, instead of accepting his duty, he runs away to a white Brazilian cowboy town a day’s drive away from his community. It’s here, isolated from his people that he faces the reality of being an indigenous person in contemporary Brazil.

In a way, The Dead and the Others feels like a prequel to Maya Da-Rin’s The Fever. Both films are directed by outsiders filming indigenous people in Brazil, but whereas The Dead and the Others centers on a young person leaving his community, The Fever centers on a middle aged man that has already left his community that starts being drawn back to it through visions and the prejudices he faces in ‘white’ Brazil. Both I believe are two great films to watch to get a glimpse into the indigenous experience in Brazil. However, take this opinion with a pinch of salt as I haven’t had the opportunity yet to watch any indigenous films from Brazil actually told by indigenous people. Please let me know if you have any recommendations!

From: Brazil, South America
Watch: Short Clip, JustWatch, Mubi
Next: Land of Ashes, Zama, A Fever

Theeb – Journey Back in Time in Jordan

Theeb Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Meet Theeb and Hussein, two Bedoiun brothers living in the Arabian desert during the First World War. Their lives are relatively peaceful until an Englishman appears from the desert and drags them into the violence of the war.

From: Jordan, Asia
Watch: Trailer, Amazon Rent, Amazon Buy
Next: Lawrence of Arabia, Mimosas, Rabbit Proof Fence

The Wounded Angel

The Wounded Angel Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Image result for the wounded angel baigazin You may have seen films from China and Europe, and even the Middle East, but have you seen a film from Kazakhstan? Here’s your chance to see something new. This is an excellent portrayal of Kazakhstan in the mid-90s. A country experiencing an economic and emotional depression after the split of the Soviet Union. Find out what life was like growing up in a remote town in Kazakhstan.

Why Watch The Wounded Angel?

To see a film from Kazakhstan!
Experience life in mid-90s Kazakhstan after the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
You like coming-of-age stories
See Kazakh singing in traditional dress and a currency with 3 Tenge notes

The Breakdown

“After the collapse of the USSR, in an effort to preserve the economy, the government cut off electric power every evening”

The film starts with 13 year old Zharas, a young boy living in a remote town in Kazakhstan. He pokes a hole in the top of an egg shell and drinks its contents raw while standing topless in a bare room. He starts shadow boxing before sitting down to make a knuckleduster out of molten metal and a simple mould. Next, he hops onto a train and smokes a cigarette by the door as the train moves through barren landscape.

The Wounded Angel, looks at four 13 year old Kazakh boys living in the same Kazakh town in the middle of a barren landscape. There is an emotional depression. None of the adults ever smile, grimace, or frown. Their permanently expressionless faces have rubbed off on their children who have grown up without emotion. As a result, without emotion, their childhood cannot exist, and they ae forced to become adults.

The fixed camera shots do not hint any change either. The lack of camera movement conveys stillness, therefore mirroring the lack of progress on film (the electricity cuts out, there is no employment, and no emotion).

Look out for the ‘through-the-window-frame’ (or keyhole) shots that appear in each of the four stories. Each one (apart from Toads) shows the character standing within a derelict house by an empty window frame. Each window is a window showing their fate:

Zharas: his father walks away, but he runs after him after finishing his cigarette
Chick: shows his friends beating up the two kids he didn’t want to fight
Toad: he climbs through a hole in the wall and meets a group of kids
Aslan: shows a half dead tree

Conclusion

The Wounded Angel is a fantastic depiction of a country in an emotional depression. This is a realist coming-of-age story that contrasts heavily with the nostalgic coming-of-age films that you are used to. Watch this if you are interested in watching something from the great Eurasian Steppe.