At the Ready                      5 suns

At the Ready was easily my favorite documentary of the festival. The filmmakers follow three high school students in El Paso, Texas who have signed up for a Border Patrol training program at their high school. This is an extra-curricular activity for students, but instead of playing sports or doing creative writing they are learning how to do drug raids and find illegal aliens. All of the participants are of Mexican descent so there is some internal conflict about what they are learning. The kids even participate in competitions where their team is judged on how well they perform in staged events like drug raids. They handle fake guns so nobody gets hurt, but physically take down the pretend suspects. The kids seem to get support from their families as law enforcement seems to be one of the few viable career opportunities in the community. This is quite a dramatic departure from going to band contest and chess club like I remember from high school! The movie, filmed in 2018 and 2019 finishes with the students’ graduation and with them making plans for the future. In the Q&A session afterwards, the three students were present. When questioned, only one was still planning on a future in law enforcement with life intervening for the other two. President Trump figured in some of the discussions, especially in regard to feelings about the border wall. These high school law enforcement clubs and programs exist in schools throughout the state of Texas. I thoroughly recommend this movie.

Sabaya                  3 suns

The movie Sabaya was filmed in the Middle East in 2019 and 2020 and follows the efforts of a small group of Kurds who work to free captive young women and girls from a camp called Al-Hol in Syria. The girls that they are after are of the Yazidi religion of the Kurds and have been kidnapped by ISIS or Daesh as they are known in the Middle East. The girls, some captured as little children are forced to marry Daesh men and serve as sex slaves. The group uses women volunteers who infiltrate the camp and search for the girls in the tent city that is filled with hundreds of enslaved girls. After one is found, men from the group enter the camp and secretly smuggle the girl out to safety returning them to their family if they are still alive. The documentary follows the style of letting the filmed experience speak for itself without the use of narration. There is an occasional printed statement on screen but little explanation beyond that. The scenes where the girls relate the horrors they lived through are quite compelling. The film has to be one of the highest degrees of danger to the filmmakers to be imagined. President Trump gets mentioned a couple of times because of his decision to allow Turkey to attack the Kurdish people (a US ally) following the defeat of ISIS.

American Factory                             5 stars

Filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert produced an excellent documentary in American Factory that came out in 2019. In 2008 near Dayton, Ohio a GM auto plant closed down forcing thousands of workers to lose their jobs. Then in 2015, a Chinese billionaire named Cao announced that a new plant producing automobile windshields would open on the site and would offer jobs to the community. The filmmakers began following some of the workers, both American and Chinese in meetings, the factory floor and their homes. Through interviews and exchanges between counterparts, the cultural clash between the individualistic Americans and the monolithic Chinese is stark. We see how the corporate culture values maximum production at the cost of worker safety and how this impacts the lives of the workers. At the same time we see successful interactions between the cultures where workers come to see and understand one another and that their difficulties transcend national identity. There is a thread following a union organizing effort on the part of some workers and the corporation’s determination to avoid unionization at all costs. Some of the workers will lose their jobs before the film ends. There is a segment where some of the American supervisors are taken to the company headquarters in China. The contrast between nationalities is comical and illustrative of the divide between the societies. It is likely that the filmmakers didn’t know what they were getting into when they started the project, but they have captured the effect of globalization of industry on workers and the unbridgeable gap between American and Chinese cultures. The film won the Documentary Best Directing Award at Sundance, 2019 and the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award for 2019.

I Am Not Your Negro                      5 stars

It has been four years since this documentary about writer and social critic James Baldwin was released and I finally got to see it. The renowned author of several books, plays and essays concerning Black’s place in American history was working on a new project when he passed away in 1987. The book was to be called “Remember This House” and concerned Baldwin’s personal memories of his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. all of whom were assassinated when they were still young. This excellent documentary shows how articulate and eloquent he was through footage of speeches he gave and appearances on The Dick Cavett Show as well as readings from the unfinished manuscript read by Samuel L. Jackson. The scenes of angry white mobs and portrayals of Blacks in popular culture illustrate just how bad race relations were in America. More recent scenes indicate that we still have a long way to go, but there is hope. As Baldwin has suggested, you can’t study the history of America without studying the history of the Negro in America. The film is expertly put together and is deserving of the Academy Award nomination it received for Best Documentary.

GEN_ 4 suns

This documentary from Italy deals with the medical challenges faced by two groups of people, both of which experience opposition in today’s charged political environment. We go inside the clinic of a special doctor, Dr. Maurizio Bini in Milan as he consults with his many patients. He overseers aspiring parents trying to conceive by in vitro fertilization and the treatment of individuals who are transitioning to the gender they identify with. He does this while also dealing with the constraints of a conservative government at a time when the demand for his services is high. The filmmakers filmed his sessions with his patients as he learns of their situations and recommends treatments. He has a personal approach with each individual and acts as a psychiatrist getting to their mental state as well. Health care is provided by the government in Italy so his services are free. This leads to a real variety of patients who come from all cultures and ethnicities. His practice requires him to be familiar not only with Italian law but also the laws of many foreign countries. And he speaks to his patients in several foreign languages. He even has one patient who is in prison seeking to change their gender. Some of his decisions are not consistent with government policies so he has to bend the rules on occasion. The movie shows us that these issues that may seem abstract are things that medical professionals with heavy scientific backgrounds deal with regularly. At the Q & A Dr. Bini appeared personally to the rather small audience and was delightful in answering questions about his work.

The Perfect Neighbor 3 suns

In the U.S. Documentary category comes a documentary dealing with a subject that plagues America; that is, the proliferation of guns and the violence inflicted on our neighborhoods. In particular, is the use of Stand Your Ground laws that excuses the use of guns to settle disputes. Everyone remembers the 2023 case in Marion County, Florida of a young black mother being shot to death by her neighbor, an older white woman. The neighbor shot her through her own locked door as the mother was responding to the way her children were being treated by the woman as they played in the open lot next door. The filmmakers tell the entire story using police bodycam footage of their many interactions with the woman and the neighbors over a period of many months. The woman made numerous calls to the police to report the noisy children and the police had many responses and meetings with her. We get to see how the situation went on and on until it finally escalated in the death of Ajike Owens, the young mother. The movie is painful to watch as the dangers go unrecognized and especially upon seeing the reactions of the family when they realize that Ajike is gone. At the end a graphic explains how the passage of Stand Your Ground laws has led to an increase in gun deaths in the states where they were enacted. While it is a compelling story, the use of the police footage almost exclusively does get to be repetitive. After the film, the filmmakers and friends and family of Ajike were present for Q & A. The director, Geeta Gandbhir is a renowned filmmaker who also happened to be friends with the affected family. She almost immediately sought to document the event after the tragedy happened. The presence of the friends and Ajike’s mother at the showing emphasized just how real these events are and how devastating it is to the family. Four small children are now left without a mother because of the thoughtless actions of one individual. The film ends showing that the shooter was sentenced to 25 years for her crime.

Prime Minister 5 suns

Prime Minister is an engaging documentary in the World Cinema Documentary category, from New Zealand covering the five years of the administration of the country’s first woman prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. She was filmed from just before she became leader of the Labour Party in 2017 up to her departure in 2023. The filmmakers had access to her personal life,  filming her and her partner at home as well as in her office.  The film begins and ends with connections to America as she makes visits to Harvard University inferring she has a message for Americans. Her service was quite revolutionary as she was not married to her partner and she was pregnant as she was about to take office. She expressed how she was actually more afraid of winning the office than losing.  We see how things can rapidly change for elected officials and the same is true for Ardern. She came in planning to deal with climate change and abortion rights.  But during her time in office, the mass shooting at a mosque happened, forcing the country to deal with automatic weapons and hate.  New Zealand responded with a ban on such weapons.  Then there was the eruption of a volcano killing many.  Finally,  came Covid in 2020 and the government response.  New Zealand had the distinction of enforcing a shutdown that successfully eradicated the virus from the country and Ardern played a large role in this effort.  We also see the right wing response from those who believed the conspiracy theories and objected to the Covid vaccine. These were the same beliefs of the vaccine causing the deaths that we saw in America. It was refreshing to see how she redefined leadership in a modern country while at the same time dealing with the pressures of being a mother.  America could learn a lot by paying attention to this model. Be sure to look for this movie.

Will & Harper     4 ½ stars

Last year at Sundance a most unusual documentary premiered that was about two old friends reconnecting after losing touch after a few years. As I had heard about Will & Harper at the festival, I decided to go see this much talked about film in a theater. Here, one friends is “one of the greatest actors in the world” and the other is a comedy writer who has transitioned into the woman she had long thought she should be. The actor is Will Ferrell of SNL fame, (who is not one of my favorite comedians) and the writer is Harper Steele, who Ferrell met in 1995 during his first week on SNL and the two became close friends. Later, the two of them then worked together on multiple projects after leaving SNL. Upon being informed in an email of his friend’s decision and her new name, Ferrell suggested that the two of them take a road trip across America to some of her favorite spots and document it all by filming the whole trip, to which Steele agreed. They visit many dives and biker bars with Harper in women’s clothing and actually encounter many sympathetic people along the way. She does get misgendered a few times but that is corrected without incident. We meet some of Harper’s family and colleagues on the trip who are very supportive of her decision. They take in an Indiana Pacers game in Indianapolis and of course Ferrell is recognized. They even get the attention of Indiana Governor, Eric Holcomb, who asks them for a photo op after being introduced. We later see that he and many other politicians are behind anti-trans legislation enacted in many states throughout the country. Later, it is at a popular Texas steakhouse with Ferrell dressed up as Sherlock Holmes that they encounter real transphobia with many of those present posting insults about Steele on social media, making the scene uncomfortable for her. The real value of the film comes in the many quiet moments when this pair of friends engage in heartfelt conversation about what Harper went through in her life and how she came to the decision to transition. She shares how she knew something wasn’t quite right even as a child and on occasion had self-loathing thoughts. Sometimes, they even break down in tears in these scenes. You may wonder what the value is in making such a film. Is it just some publicity project for famous people? I think that it shows just what trans people go through in their lives and acknowledges them as real people defying how some deny their existence. I remember the movie being criticized in social media shortly after it appeared at Sundance. I can’t say that I understand the whole trans phenomenon, but certainly see the value in allowing their stories to be told. The movie is in theaters still and is available on Netflix.

The Janes                                            5 suns

We go back to the late sixties and early seventies with The Janes. This impressive documentary tells the story of an underground group of young women in Chicago whose mission it was to allow women to get access to safe abortions at a time when abortions were illegal in nearly every state in the country. It may be hard to remember now, but before abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973 desperate women who found themselves pregnant went to mob controlled doctors in unsafe settings to have illegal abortions, often with deadly results. This group of about eight women, mostly in their twenties were active in the civil rights movement and other causes, but found that the male dominated activists cared little about women’s causes. Thus, they formed a group they called Jane to aid young women and girls who needed safe abortions. The documentary interviews the women of the group, now in their seventies and eighties, to get their stories and uses archival footage of Chicago and events of the time, giving us a fascinating portrayal of the story. In the Q&A afterwards three of the women show that they are still active and passionate about the causes they are behind. It is also made clear that this issue is still forefront in their minds and the outcome is very much in doubt.