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Shaina (Zimbabwe) – Pan African Film Festival 2021

Shaina (Shine) is a teenager who has a knack for making something out of nothing and could have a promising future as an engineer, except for the fact that she doesn’t believe in herself. When she and her best friends are faced with a host of grown-up problems – loss of loved ones, unpaid exam fees and the curse of “blessers” – they come close to giving up. Their story is one of forgiveness and friendship, of creating a new family from the people who love you, and of the very real girl power.

Once you see Shaina you’ll realize that this blurb is sugar coated. Her “grown-up problems” are a list of the very worst things that could happen to a kid: losing your only guardian, being unable to afford education, and stalkers that groom you. Based on what happens, this could be one of the most depressing films of recent times, in the same field as Capernaum, but it chooses not to be. Despite the awful conditions, Shaina is filled with vibrant colors, positive music, and dancing. It’s unrealistic hopefulness is present from the opening scene in which Shine digs for scraps in the local junkyard whilst uplifting music plays in the background. Even though it feels overly optimistic considering the circumstances, the hopeful portrayal of Shine and her friends is needed to prevent this from becoming poverty porn.

However, the credibility of the film isn’t helped by the clichéd characters. One friend resorts to prostitution to help get by, another friend is pregnant, and there’s a dodgy crime lord. It’s also not helped by what feels like an overwritten script which verbalized everything in the dialogue, leaving little to be said by the images.

Another thing that felt too obvious was the film’s love for capitalism. It’s presented as the obvious answer to Shine’s problems despite all the awful things that she has to deal with. It conveys that it’s no big deal that she has to raise money to pay for her school exams now that her family has died and people have stolen what was left for her education, because she can just become an ‘entrepreneur’ and make enough money by selling eggs after school. The movie chooses to use Shine’s inventiveness as a wonderful way out of poverty instead of examining why she has to make money to pay for her education after she’s left an orphan in the first place. Perhaps this isn’t surprising given that this is a film made with U.S. Aid. However, the focus on the American dream just feels like a hopeful distraction from Shine’s reality.

Check our Pan African Film Festival 2021 page for more reviews coming out of the 29th edition of the festival.

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.

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.

Dadli (Antigua & Barbuda) – A Brief Immersion into Hidden Island Life

Dadli Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Dadli features a boy’s narrative over a montage of shots of Antiguan life. It’s a brief but incredibly immersive 15 minutes in Antigua & Barbuda that any fans of Jonas Mekas and Khalil Joseph should love.

From: Antigua & Barbuda, North America
Watch: Vimeo, IMDb
Next: Process, Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, Right Near the Beach

Dadli – The Breakdown

Dadli is short, but it doesn’t need time to build its beautifully immersive aesthetic. The quick editing and dulled diegetic sound (the music and narrative are the focus in this film) don’t allow you to think of anything else apart from the images and atmospheric sounds you are hearing, whilst the natural home video style texture of the film – which is taken to the next level with the cinematography – and the mid to close range shots draw you in further. This combination of techniques makes it feel both immersive and intimate – as if you are experiencing a Fast-Forwarded snippet of life on the island. The texture of the film even sweats the close-mugginess of the night, the warm melancholy of the sunsets, and laid back vibrancy of daytime. It feels like you’re there. Whilst other movies capture island life over the course of a feature film, Dadli manages to do it in a compact 15 minutes.

The young boy’s narrative is what separates the immersive style of Dadli from Khalil Joseph’s art-films and music videos. He’s a kid playing an adult – with no role models or parents. He talks of murder, drugs, and poverty, giving us an ‘underground tour’ of the island. However, his narrative never feels completely believable, which makes the film feel like it could be a twisted fantasy or exaggerated memory (of the brief adult narration) instead of a harsh reality. The fleeting shots of the montage helps to blur the distinction between fantasy and reality, turning it into an even more trance-like, immersive experience.

If you’re a fan of movies that use sound and editing to immerse viewers into an environment, you should watch Dadli. It creates a feeling of life on Antigua that you probably wouldn’t experience as a tourist or visitor.

What to Watch Next

For more immersive films that rely on sound, check out Khalil Joseph’s catalogue of music films such as Process (featuring Sampha) and Good Kid m.A.A.d City (featuring Kendrick Lamar). Both, like Dadli create a strong sense of place through the editing and sound of their movies.

You could also try the films of Jonas Mekas, such as Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania and Lost, Lost, Lost. These films use home-video style footage and quick editing to immerse viewers into the narrators stories.

Or for more immersive editing from the Caribbean, try Jamaica’s Right Near the Beach.

La Chimera (Italy) – Combining Time-Travel with Classic Cinema

La Chimera Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Time-travel is a key ingredient of some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. It holds an unnatural power to change the future and the past, adding the driving plot behind the Back to the Future and Terminator series from the 1980s and a few modern Christopher Nolan films. Over in Italy, Alice Rohrwacher has mastered the ability to use time-travel naturally. Instead of using it as the driving force of the plot and drama, it is the icing on the cake. She has combined time-travel with wholly Italian influences; De Sica’s Neo-realism and Fellini’s Surrealism, to make her own fantastic style.

From: Italy, Europe
Watch: Trailer, JustWatch
Next: Happy as Lazzaro, First Cow, Caro Diario

La Chimera – The Breakdown

La Chimera starts with a dream. Sepia-tinted snippets of a woman in a garden evokes the feeling of warm nostalgia. The dream is interrupted by a train conductor asking for tickets, which introduces us to our dreamer: Arthur, played by Josh O’Connor. He picks out a very old looking train ticket the size of a postcard and his train-cabin-mates pick up on his unusual accent and ask where he comes from. “Far,” is his one-worded answer, coding the mystery of his character.

So who is Arthur, and has he come from another era? He doesn’t reveal anything obvious on the train. It’s not clear where he’s going or coming from, and as per his one-worded answer in the paragraph above, we don’t know who he is or where he is from either. A few puzzle pieces are inferred from the following scenes, but these do not give us a complete picture. We find out that:

He’s English
He’s been in jail – likely as the fall guy for a troubadour group of associates
He’s looking for a woman
He has a special skill at finding treasures from the past

Whilst these attributes build his character, they also all add to his mysteriousness by leading to new questions:

Why is an Englishman in rural Italy with a group of grave-robbers?
What led to his capture and was he turned in?
Who is he looking for and what happened to them?
How did he get his supernatural skill?

This mystery makes him appear like he’s been picked up from another world and time and plonked into rural Italy.

Time-travel has popped up before in Alice Rohrwacher’s films. In her previous feature, Happy as Lazzaro, the titular character falls from a great height, blacks out, and reappears in a modern era, portaling from his previous life in feudal Italy. Whilst the time-travel is more metaphorical than literal, Rohrwacher makes the jump more believable by situating Lazzaro (the lead character) in a location stuck in the past; a small rural Italian town with old, decaying houses, no modern infrastructure, and no signs of modern technology, before transporting him to the modern city. The town that Arthur finds himself in is exactly the same setting as Lazzaro’s decaying town. His house is a DIY shack on the outside of the town wall, he visits the crumbling house of his lost lover, and electronic screens and electricity itself are practically non-existent. This setting, combined with Arthur’s mystery makes viewers accustomed to Rohrwacher’s films feel like Arthur is from another era and place, and has got lost in old-town Italy whilst searching for his lost love.

Conclusion

If the time-travel and mystery haven’t already sold you on watching La Chimera, know that watching La Chimera is like watching a bubbling pot of Italian Cinema influences whilst witnessing a new talent find their stylistic voice. There’s pieces of De Sica’s neo-realism in the poverty-stricken characters and tough world they exist in, fragments of Antonioni’s mood-driven mystery in their vague backgrounds and existence, and a large chunk of Fellini’s surrealism and panache in the bombastic scenes and cinematic magic. Rohrwacher in La Chimera manages to bring together all these influences whilst building on the natural time-travel of Happy as Lazzaro, forming her own style from the embers of the Italian classics.