In the documentary section of the Toronto International Film Festival, the audiences will be amazed as they witness different cultures who through thick and thin, strive to uphold their beliefs, their dreams, and even their survival. Views from different parts of the world are availed to let the viewers experience what would otherwise be just a reflection of a single excellently done art piece. Such a viewpoint reveals humanity in struggle, the need to unearth things, and to campaign for fairness in a hostile environment. In these movies, people manage to remain alive and struggle against all odds to uphold their values and their aspirations with the assistance of video makers and narrate their tales to the world.
As the supporters of Donald Trump fiercely contend a family’s mantra of unity for the republican party doesn’t compromise for a cause, the film has appeared to be perfectly positioned ahead of the upcoming us elections. The lone wolf is Adam Kinzinger, a previous congressman of the Republican Party, who gained prominence when he marched out and him within the Republican Party, who had failed to sever ties with Donald Trump’s regime on January 6th.
As luck would have it, Nancy Pelosi invited him to serve in the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack where he is inspired to carry out the duties of reporting and narrating the events of that day to the nation and demonstrate to the world how far off the Republican party has become when it accepted a coup and undermined democracy by not allowing for a peaceful transfer of power.
Progressive director Steve Pink is paired up with his conservative subject Kinzinger, making them something of a politically themed ‘Odd Couple’; the two manage to bicker back and forth while tackling serious issues now and again. Much of the archival material which Pink is recording in his wit with Kinzinger, and his assistants view – and look like – tremendous accidents cut from the series “Veep” in depicting the oddities of one of the most interesting jobs in America and why, when everything goes wrong, so many screaming and terrifying people can happily trust their colleagues.
At the outset, Kinzinger discloses that he picked Pink to make the documentary because he enjoyed Pink’s film Hot Tub Time Machine and despite the fact that the two are an odd couple, Pink’s humor makes Kinzinger a person whose ideology is a hindrance to the core message: democracy needs fixing and people from all sides of the aisle have to get involved.
With the help of Pink’s inquisition, Kinzinger puts out more of his internal impression, disappointments and aspirations that cannot be contained in a single-page congressional biography. Apart from the usual busy routine of committee assignments and elections, he seeks to have a family, is on the verge of retiring from army service, is a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder from a violent ordeal, and still grapples with a passion for politics and conservative ideals into a disassembled world where he became a party-less politician. The movie is quite reflective and even those who aren’t embroiled in the cognitive dissonance of right-wing marching orders will find the film quite thought-provoking. For as documentaries like The Last Republican or War Game have shown, this discussion is not finished and democracy still remains at odds with people who are ready to bring this nation into fascism.
Somewhere far in the world, in Iran, director Leila Amini aims her camera at one of her family members which resonates with her passions, her sister Nasreen, who aspires to be a professional singer.
It is sadly the situation of Nasreen that Iranians do not allow women to perform in public, however, this does not bother her the least. She books herself for singing classes and practices while on the wheel. Her sister remains by her side, recording every stage of Nasreen’s moving towards the skies, and then comes the glorious moments such as the first time she records herself, and everyday challenges- being an aspiring career woman and a mum.
But Leila Amini’s ‘A Sister’s Tale’ is not only concerned in the realization of Nasreen’s lying pop star aspirations. The camera depicts her sad divorce too, showing a more general problem of a lack of decent partners, like Nasreen’s who is not doing almost a thing around the house and the children, does not come after surgery and so on, and just ignores the whole live of a young family for which she begs him to become active for the children. At the same time, Leila continues to film, recording troubling arguments, comforting her niece and nephew and understanding the tough talks Nasreen has with her mother who is terrified that her daughter’s attempts to emancipate herself will not benefit the children.
At the conclusion, “A Sister’s Tale” transforms into an account of survival towards the people like Nasreen who give up themselves and their interests to serve the needs of families, the needs of the family of course are the only foreign husbands.
As with her challenges against the government’s restrictions on women performers, Nasreen fights with equal courage at home. There are times in this documentary where it feels like Leila and Nasreen are against the world whilst at times Nasreen would rather not have the camera rolling. It is through the love of her sister, and the trust of Nasreen that makes Nasreen’s story relatable to many women, and women around her.
What distinguishes “From Ground Zero” from the competition is its regrettable portrayal of Palestinian suffering, which the audience may find overly sensitive for their own good – it’s not the perspective of a Palestinian, after all. Directed by the Palestinian Rashid Masharawi, the Masharawi Fund combined 22 different short films from the minds of different filmmakers with the aim of taking the viewers to Gaza’s devastated areas and refugee camps and listening to surviving victims\’ clamor for their vanished loved ones. The most amount of time spent on a single film is roughly nine minutes, with some films belonging to both the fiction and non-fiction genres, but the viewer gets to see the memories of different people, such as a refugee warehouse worker who needs to cover up her exhaustion because it has been months since she slept properly in a picture titled ‘Selfie,’ a comic who is constantly battling for a place on stage but is in a hot shower line at camp titled ‘Everything is fine,’ and a filmmaker who turned to scrape flour on the roadside due to starvation, thanks to the work in ‘Sorry Cinema.’
In the investigations of several narratives, the environment is made of debris and drapes over the films, towering edifices that are on the verge of collapse, and in many others the sound of drone activity is pervasive throughout.
There are some filmmakers, who do not shy away from the miserable reality that we are facing today, for instance, in the “The Teacher” where the protagonist walks out for the day and realizes that he is out of mobile charge and is hungry but there is a long queue at the bakery. Sometimes, such short films portray the needs of the people showing them laughing and dancing because they go through all the pain to be able to see and hug their family again. “From Ground Zero” is a powerful depiction of painful stories that many eyewitnesses experience and that are often obscured by the press, because they are not always popular.
Next year, “From Ground Zero” will be Palestine’s entry to the Oscars and this will provide the audience an even better perspective of how people have lived in Gaza through the words and works of these people.
There are some tales that are truly heart-wrenching, such as “Soft Skin,” in which a group of children explains how they came to produce a stop-motion animated film depicting their mothers tattooing their names on their bodies in the event that a bombing may occur. Another such story is ‘Taxi Wanissa, a short drama in which the filmmaker herself communicates that she had to stop her film because she had lost her brother and family and could not film the end that was originally planned. The shorts that are presented here in the film “From Ground Zero” become a sudden scream and plea that hopeful filmmakers together with their collaborators and ordinary people quietly featured are still there still enduring the deteriorating conditions and still requiring aid. ‘From Ground Zero’ is a celebration of the resilience, of humanity that has witnessed, and suffered through great atrocities of war. It is also a work of art that seeks to educate the world for the necessity of a better conclusion, rather than asking for a sequel.
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