While Neon/Participant’s animated documentary Flee, directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, is Denmark’s Oscar submission for best international feature (and is also a contender in the animated feature category), it is not the only film in the documentary feature race that turns its lens toward lives from across the globe. These four features also shine lights on powerful international tales of struggle, resistance and optimism.
MTV Documentary Films’ Ascension — which was named a top documentary by the National Board of Review and has earned nominations from the DGA, IDA, PGA, Gotham and Film Independent Sprit Awards — is director Jessica Kingdon’s look at the economy in contemporary China. Eschewing talking heads and a central narrative, the film takes an observational approach and examines President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream.”
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Told through vignettes, Ascension was shot in 51 locations throughout the country and crosses the class divide. We see scenes of blue-color workers caught in the sterile monotony of factories (one absurdly funny sequence includes the dedicated assembly of sex dolls) before the film shifts, rising up the social ladder as it depicts the middle and upper classes, ending with the latter’s embrace of Western overindulgence. The film avoids making many political statements, instead urging its viewers to interpret the scenes of work and wealth on display and come to their own conclusions about China’s path toward economic progress.
Janus Films’ Faya Dayi is a similarly poetic documentary that offers a dreamlike examination of life in contemporary Ethiopia. Directed by first-time filmmaker Jessica Beshir, the film — which has earned nominations from the IDA, Cameraimage, Critics’ Choice, Gotham and Independent Spirit Awards — focuses on the farming and use of khat, a stimulant used in spiritual practices.
For Beshir, who was born in Ethiopia and fled the Derg military regime with her family at the age of 16, Faya Dayi is an act of homecoming. Speaking with THR in December, the director notes that her return to the country to begin filming Faya Dayi made her realize how much Ethiopia’s economy now relies on khat production: “When I returned, at first glance, the most striking change was in the landscape. The crops that painted the 12-hour-long drive from Addis to Harar — teff, sorghum and coffee — were now replaced by a green blanket of khat, an ancient stimulant now turned into the most lucrative cash crop. Haramaya, the lake of my memories, was all dried up.” Khat remains a complicated aspect of Ethiopian culture, as its boom has brought an economic optimism to the country while also changing the country’s physical and cultural landscape.
Director Camilla Nielsson returned to Zimbawbe for Greenwich Entertainment’s President, her follow-up to her acclaimed 2014 film Democrats. In her previous work, Nielsson examined former president Robert Mugabe’s final days in power and the establishment of the country’s first democratic constitution; her latest — a Sundance special jury award winner and a Gotham Award nominee — follows the country’s first democratic election and the bitter political battle between former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and a young, progressive opposition candidate named Nelson Chamisa, who ran on an anti-corruption platform.
With unfettered access to Chamisa’s campaign both before and after the election — when the election results are called into scrutiny after widespread allegations of fraud (which American viewers may recognize from our own recent history) — Nielsson’s film is a look at democracy under siege. It also proves how perilous democracy — and those tasked with defending it — can be, particularly in scenes in which Chamisa (and the filmmakers) narrowly avoids a violent demonstration in response to the election’s contested results.
Music Box Films’ Writing With Fire, from directors Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, also offers a look at a particular community at a time of great change. At the center of the documentary — which earned an audience award and special jury prizes as Sundance, as well as two PGA Award noms — is the staff of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only all-female newspaper.
Comprised of members of the Dalit caste, India’s lowest social group formerly known as “the untouchables,” Khabar Lahariya‘s journalists find themselves in a state of flux. Not only must they continue their groundbreaking work despite resistance from a male-dominated industry and culture (their own husbands often reduce their profession as merely a hobby), the staffers must also learn to embrace new technology as the newspaper makes a digital expansion. At times a love letter to the journalistic profession, Writing With Fire depicts women who refuse to let the world leave them behind while maintaining the gravitas and urgency of their work. And it also reiterates the importance of women in the field, particularly when covering stories about discrimination and assault.
