In four stories that span the globe, individuals and entire societies face down four different challenges to their continued right to self-determination – whether that means personal struggles on the path to pursuing a life of personal freedom, massive populations banding together to hold back a threat to their right to democracy, indigenous groups seeking to protect their health and way of life from international encroachment, or teaming up to demand the restoration of respect to their ancestors. In our increasingly globalized world, where should the line of freedom versus protection be struck? And how can modern media or science and medicine help people today protect both yesterday and tomorrow?
The Seoul Guardians dir. Kim Jong-Woo, Kim Shin-Wan and Cho Chul-Young
Final Rating: 4/5
In December of 2024, South Korea’s then-president – in a move that would make his presidency the shortest in the nation’s history – enacted one of the greatest tests to democracy the modern world has seen. After a declaration of martial law, the public, fueled by the media reports and live-streams from early responders, raced to the National Assembly in Seoul to protest.
That protest turned into a tense six-hour stand-off between average citizens and the military, who were instructed to prevent a Constitutionally required vote, on whether or not to lift the president’s declaration of martial law, from taking place. President Yoon Suk Yeol nearly succeeded in enacting a dictatorship, thwarted only by lawmakers literally climbing over walls to do their jobs and human chains linking together behind hastily built barricades to physically protect the political process.
The Seoul Guardians’ directors Kim Jong-Woo, Kim Shin-Wan, and Cho Chul-Young – as members of the media – were among the first on the scene. Together, they captured events as they unfolded inside the National Assembly, outside the building as helicopters descended full of soldiers, and outside the gates where the shuffling masses made use of their numbers to impede the process of impeding the functionality of their government.
This has been edited into 72 minutes of no-frills filmmaking that play out like a thriller, the viewer dropped into the middle of the claustrophobic crowds. Throughout, personal testimonies and historical footage draw parallels to the public’s collective memory of the Gwangju Massacre 45 years earlier, a warning from the past propelling the present populace to action. The result is a hope-affirming testament to the power of protest – but also a cry for radical political forgiveness, to let the healing begin.
The Seoul Guardians had its North American premiere at Hot Docs, as part of the World Showcase, where it won the Bill Nemtin Award for Best Social Impact Documentary. Thank you to Asian Shadows for the screener.
Parasisi dir. Zaïde Bil and Sébastien Segers
Final Rating: 3.5/5
In Belgian directors Zaïde Bil and Sébastien Segers’ Parasisi, the Wayana people who live along the Lawa river, the border of Surinam and French Guyana, are defending a form self-determination even more fundamental: they’re fighting for their right to live healthy lives connected to their traditional lands and especially waterways. Through Angela Otten’s rich black-and-white cinematography, emphasizing the misty magic of the deep-Amazonian forests and ripples of the water in thrilling high definition, with complementary sound design, we are plunged into this natural splendor now being threatened by foreign encroachment.
A close-up shows the thin slick of oil now coating the water. Interstitial texts set up the unique balance of this place in the world and how it’s repeatedly broken by the “parasisi” – intruders. Whether that is the well-meaning missionaries, who bring modern medicine but also demand the locals follow more European ways of life, or the illegal Brazilian gold-mining operations constantly clacking away in the background, supplied by Chinese shopkeepers, poisoning the river fish locals depend on.
The mere 2500 remaining Wayana adapt as they can – the film plays out in a smörgåsbord of languages: Sranan Tongo (English Creole), French, Dutch, English, and (Brazilian) Portuguese. Over a languidly paced 61 minutes, we see a selection of subjects doing their best to ignore the cameras. This slice of Amazon life, created in cooperation with UNESCO, does not shy away from the dry details (like a French doctor explaining mercury levels in pregnant women).
However, this barely-feature-length film balances exposition and the more personal insights into these different perspectives well. And, this cannot be overemphasized: the photography, from children playing in the water to the gutting of fish, is truly spectacular. The result is a subtle but damning critique of the lethal potential of modern capitalism.
Hot Docs was the global premiere of Parasisi, where it featured in the International Spectrum Competition. Thank you to Taskovski Films for the screener.
Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] dir. Adam and Zack Khalil
Final Rating: 2.5/5
The unwieldy title of brothers Adam and Zack Khalil’s Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] is both a definition of a word and a statement of defiance. The word in question comes from the language of the Anishnaabe – a brotherhood of the Ojibwe/Chippawa, Ottawa/Odawa, and Potawatomi Native American tribes, to which this writer belongs – albeit a different band separated by nearly two centuries of divergent history from the collective portrayed here.
This film looks over the shoulders of the members of the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation & Repatriation Alliance (MACPRA) as they work to repatriate the remains of ancestors that have been housed in museum vaults since Thomas Jefferson decided to start digging up human remains in 1784.
Over 80 minutes, we hear from both tribal representatives and historians from the universities and museums dragging their feet in their legal obligation to cooperate. It’s a necessarily confrontational process, including for this viewer personally, as the likes of New York City’s American Museum of Natural History is dragged for its collection – although that collection is the first time I personally encountered remnants of Potawatomi culture from before it was necessarily and irrevocably altered by my own band’s removal to Oklahoma.
This perspective, not addressed by a film focused on people still living in their people’s pre-Andrew Jackson lands, is balanced by a real need to reassert the humanity of our ancestors: the aanikoobijigan (the accent is on the third syllable), a word that also means descendant. The filmmakers’ decision to blur any remains captured by the camera emphasizes that these are not the relics of racism they were long treated as, with interludes spent on looters both private and institutional, and the painstaking efforts to sort out the messes they made. Along the way, we’re given a cursory look at the origin of museums and Native American activism from the 1970s – just enough to whet your appetite without satisfying it.
This is all wrapped in psychedelic trappings, with titles and transitions such as flashing rainbow texts flying through forests and sometimes jarring audio interludes, that awaken an early ‘90s nostalgia but feel incongruous with the content and tone of the rest of the film. And the title’s insistence, repeated throughout, on the importance to this story of the circularity of time in the Aanishnaabe language remains too superficial to adequately make its point. While the point that nikan (my own bones) are the same as those shown here finally reaching their final resting places is fully felt, a deeper look at the culture of the ancestors they seek to save would have added more depth to this important tale.
Aanikoobijigan, which premiered at Sundance, was viewed during the Hot Docs film festival, its international premiere. Thank you to the festival for the screener.
Truck Mama dir. Zipporah Nyaruri
Final Rating: 2.5/5
This ride-along documentary about a mother determined to decide her own destiny, is the result of a global collaboration spanning Kenya, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and the Netherlands. The subject of Zipporah Nyaruri’s first feature Truck Mama is Evaline Mumbua Mutuku – a pan-African truck driver bucking expectations of her as a woman and (single) mother and a member of her highly educated family, all in her quest to see the world (or at least more of East Africa).
While the film opens with the very bubbly Evaline still on the job while nine months pregnant, as the advertising promises, the majority of the 85-minute runtime actually covers a period of her career set two years later. We see Evaline struggle for closeness with her older son, her now-two-year-old looked after by a nanny as she sets off from Mombasa City, Kenya, for an ill-fated job that will see her join a trucking caravan to Juba, South Sudan, traversing highways known for their brigands.
Although the tension on the road is real, Evaline’s lack of luck on this journey actually comes from border bureaucracy and a faulty wheel. These story developments necessitate the story twice coming to a screeching halt – but this allows downtime to show the camaraderie between Evaline and her colleagues and her determination to solve her own problems – including managing a nanny about whom she has doubts and trying to maintain a relationship with her sons on the road one pre-paid minute at a time.
Hot Docs was the North American premiere of Truck Mama. Thank you to the festival for the screener.
