If you’re looking for an accessible account of the Cambodian Genocide, this film might be for you. First They Killed My Father depicts life under the horrific Khmer Rouge through the eyes of a 6 year old girl based on the book of the same name. Whilst it’s not as memorable as the book or other films on the subject, it’s the most accessible – it’s easy to watch and it’s on Netflix!
As mentioned in the opening scenes of Beatriz’s War, East Timor was a Portuguese colony until 1975 when the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) declared independence. However, their independence was short lived, as Indonesian forces invaded 9 days later to take control of the entire island. Indonesia then occupied East Timor for 24 years until East Timor finally regained its independence in 1999.
Beatriz’s War takes place over the 24 years of the Indonesian occupation. It depicts the violence of the Indonesian occupation as well as the fragmented East Timorese resistance happening around Beatriz.
Strong (or Stubborn) Independent Women
Beatriz is both strong and independent. She’s married off in the opening scenes as a young girl but due to the gentle nature of her young husband, she’s always in control. Like her father, the leader of the community, we’re always led to believe that she’s more likely to take a stand and join the fight against the Indonesians than her husband.
However, her strength seems to turn to stubbornness in the second half of the film when her gentle husband disappears in a massacre. Her community mourns the losses of the men and children killed by Indonesian forces, but she stubbornly refuses to believe that her husband is truly dead. She also never accepts her new reality, trying to maintain her old way of life by abiding by traditions. Her stubborn denial is a sign of the trauma caused by the violent occupation.
Fitting a French Legal Case into The History of East Timor
Martin Guerre was a French peasant from the 16th century who was at the center of a famous case of imposture. Several years after he left his wife and child, a man claiming to be him appeared and tricked his wife and son for three years before he was eventually found out. His story has been dramatized many times for film and TV over the years and is also inserted into the second half of Beatriz’s War after the departure of the Indonesian occupiers to emphasize the length of the occupation.
Primarily, the adaptation gives Beatriz’s War a lot of melodrama. It sets of a battle of emotions between Beatriz and her community as to the origin of a man who arrives in their community 20 years later claiming to be Beatriz’s husband. If you can get past the melodrama, the inclusion of the Martin Guerre story also highlights the impact of the long Indonesian occupation. Whilst the occupation physically destroyed a generation, the length of the occupation also helped to mentally blur a generation. With no photos, Beatriz’s image of her husband has faded over 20 years to a point where she can no longer recognize him. The long, traumatic occupation enabled the Martin Guerre story to happen.
What to Watch Next
First They Killed My Father feels like the closest film to Beatriz’s War. Both films follow a girl who sees their country occupied by an opposing force. Both films show the occupation and the genocides that go with it. However, whilst First they Killed My Father focuses on a girl’s perspective, Beatriz’s War takes place over 25 years.
For more films about the atrocities committed by Indonesians, check out Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries: The Look of Silence and The Act of Killing. Both documentaries look at the free-living leaders of Indonesian death squad that were responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Indonesians. The Look of Silence even gets the perpetrators to act out how they did it, with the killers slowly coming to realize the grotesque crimes they’ve committed.
Or if you’re looking for more stories from South East Asia featuring kids in coming-of-age stories, check out The Rocket from Laos and Golden Kingdomfrom Myanmar.
The story of Downstream to Kinshasa starts with the Six Day War from 2000. Unlike the more famous 6 Day War fought between Israel and Egypt, this one was fought between Uganda and Rwanda in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Everything centered on the town of Kisangani where approximately 4,000 people were killed and 3,000 injured.
Among the survivors was director Dieudo Hamadi. In the Q&A for the film, he mentions that he was 15 or 16 during the conflict and doesn’t remember much about it. But on one return to his hometown his memories of the war were triggered from meeting a group of people (who become the focus of this documentary) that were disabled by it. He was privileged in being able to reconstruct a normal life and forget about the war, whilst others were permanently scared by it.
He was not the only one that forgot. And if one man who lived the war had lost his memories of it, it’s not too surprising that the rest of the town and country have forgotten the war too and the victims of it.
In Downstream to Kinshasa, we follow a group of people disabled by the war. They travel to the capital to make their story heard after it seems to have fallen on deaf ears at home. They want reparations from the country that refused to protect them.
Throughout their time in Kisangani and through their journey to Kinshasa, they’re shot going about their lives. One of the most incredible sections is their journey on a flat topped cargo boat down the Congo river. It’s transformed into a moving village with makeshift protection against the elements. It’s a multi-day journey that reminded me of the desert crossing migrants in Tenere.
Whilst they’re journeying, the director cuts between their present reality on their journey and shots of the group performing on the stage. The present documents their hope for change and their disabilities as we see it, whilst the shots of them performing on stage shows their story as they tell it. Their stage play appears self-deriding and built for a popular audience, but intertwining it in the documentary empowers their story. Simply including their experiences, as they tell it, validates them. They’re heard by more people thanks to this film. And in the context of their journey to the capital, including their story as they tell it emboldens their storytelling before they face their ultimate test – convincing the politicians and public in the capital.
Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.
Notturno is a beautifully shot documentary. It’s clear that each shot has been carefully set up and framed. For example, the shots of the first protagonist of the documentary, a man traveling to his hidden canoe to go hunting, are incredibly well lit in low light. He paddles out into the darkness with the reds of the night sky burning in the background. And that’s right after the shots of him on his motorbike riding to the lake, with oil rigs spurting flames behind him. This film is full of incredible images of the borderlands between Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, and Lebanon.
However, because it’s so well shot, the documentary kind of feels a bit staged. Everything shot feels like it has been planned. It feels like the director, Gianfranco Rosi, has asked the people he’s shooting to wait for him to set up the camera before they move around, as his camera captures them so perfectly from a distance. He seems to know where they’re going. So even if it’s not that obvious, you can feel the faint presence of the director slightly disrupting their lives which makes Notturno feel less natural.
Because you can feel the director’s gaze, Notturno also feels a bit exploitative at times. The shots of poverty and buildings in ruin are what western eyes expect to see from the war torn Middle East. These images are complemented by a few displays of trauma from mothers who’ve lost their children and children who have lost their mothers. They’re opportunities to tug on the heartstrings of western audiences and emphasize the tragic cycle of war the region is stuck in. But these images don’t always feel organic. The scene with the children running through their memories feels more like the rehearsals for a local stage show that appear in the movie. Both are designed and practiced to illicit an emotional response.
That being said, the film does offer something western audiences might not expect to see: the empty silence of the borderlands. Instead of ISIS and armies, the majority of the shots feature vast open spaces explored by a few local hunters. Soldiers watch the landscape, but nothing happens. There are of course the signs of war, but no evidence of it existing in the present. As a result, it feels a bit like the photographer’s quest to shoot the Franco-Mexican War in Towards the Battle and Robert Fisk’s search for the Middle Eastern front lines in This is Not A Movie. Rosi has arrived in a war torn region to perhaps shoot the war, but the war has disappeared. Instead he finds an empty land waking up to be interpreted by his own gaze.
Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.
Le Pupille brings you into a Catholic Orphanage during Christmas in the height of the Second World War. Despite the frugal times and strict Mother Superior, the girls find joy in a few magical scenes reminiscent of the wonder of early cinema.
In the Catholic Orphanage, objects are a scarcity. Unlike the often stuffy materialism of today’s modern world, the girls in Le Pupille live in large rooms with very few things around them. This partly emphasizes the frugality of the war period, and in turn, distinguishing any warm nostalgia for Italian fascism, but it also sets a blank slate for the rare objects included in the movie to star. The radio and the giant red cake are enhanced by the absence around them, making them seem much more luxurious than they should be.
The frugality in front of the camera is also seen in the film’s production. The director, Alice Rohrwacher, shot Le Pupille completely on film, and therefore all of the special effects are completely VFX free. This gives the film a playful magic that feels like the wonder of the Melies’ silent films. In one scene a baby appears out of thin air (from one shot to the next), whilst a freeze-framed shouting Mother Superior conveys shock from what feels like the kids perspective in another. Unlike the seriousness of modern VFX, that often strives for digital realism, the old school special effects used here add wonder and magic to film. It encourages wonder rather than inhibiting it.
It’s this simplicity both in front of the camera (with the limited objects and distractions) and behind the camera (in the production process) that makes this short Christmas film feel so playful and joyful.
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