Doc Days 2019 Day 3: Too many movies

I saw four films today. That’s too many films.

Kabul, City in the Wind

Set amidst the violence of the Afghan capitol, Kabul, City in the Wind documents the stories of two working class residents going about their daily lives as suicide bombings dominate the local news cycle. One story follows a bus driver struggling to pay his debts when his bus breaks down. The other, more interesting story follows a preteen boy forced to care for his young brothers after his father flees the country.

Director Aboozar Amini gives the film a poetic, dreamlike tone by removing the sound from some of the scenes and replacing it with thoughtful character monologues over beautiful tracking shots of the city. The intimate portraits of these characters serve as a reminder that their problems are not that different from those of many Americans. One can imagine a similar documentary being made in the U.S. against the backdrop of the mass shooting epidemic.

Over the Rainbow

Over the Rainbow is a slow, listless film about the Church of Scientology. Director Jeffrey Peixoto interviews a dozen or so people connected to the church and gets their (mostly positive) thoughts about it. He seems content to take everyone’s comments at face value and fails to pry beneath the surface to discover the potentially intriguing stories behind the stories.

Most of the interviewees are fervent believers expressing their seemingly genuine love of the church. Peixoto never asks for their thoughts on the many public allegations of the church’s child labor practices. At one point a woman talks of breaking into tears at the mention of the word “usurp” in a church discussion about past lives. The film then leaves the interview and never returns. Was that woman a victim of regicide in a previous life? Is she Marie Antionette trapped in the body of a filthy commoner? I NEED TO KNOW.

This apathy toward compelling information makes for an incredibly boring film. It feels unfinished. It’s as if Peixoto recorded the first half of all his interviews and never completed them before editing the final cut. The only interesting concept in the film is confined to the opening scene in which a psychologist discusses the phenomenon of alien abductees gaining a sense of purpose in life due to their newfound belief in a higher power. Analyzing the similarities between religious people and conspiracy theorists could make for a pretty intriguing documentary. Unfortunately the film abandons the idea immediately following its introduction.

The one interview that worked was the only one that focused on the church’s negative aspects. A woman who grew up in Scientology discusses her fractured relationship with her parents driven by the religion’s view of children as adult souls transitioning from a previous life into a new body. I would have loved to see a deeper analysis of how treating young kids as mature adults affects them later in life, but the film has no interest in going there.

The movie’s saving grace is its 71-minute run time, but its measured pace and dreary score make it feel like two hours. In my next life, I’m not watching this film.

What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?

Roberto Minervini’s previous film The Other Side painted a terrifying portrait of poor, rural, white supremacists stockpiling weapons and talking of revolution. His new film pivots to the opposite end of the political spectrum, documenting the stories of three African Americans struggling to find success in a rigged system as their peers are gunned down by police.

Similar to Kabul, City in the Wind, the film is divided into separate narratives within the same environment. One story features a fourteen-year-old boy contemplating his path in life as he grows up without his incarcerated father. Another follows a middle-aged woman attempting to start a business. Both of these characters feel the weight of systemic racism as it influences their decisions and drives the outcomes. The third narrative approaches these issues more directly as it follows a small local branch of the New Black Panther Party investigating the recent police murder of Alton Sterling. Tensions rise as party members protests outside the police station in search of justice for their fallen compatriot.

Minervini’s choice to shoot the film in stunning black and white draws attention to the fact that race relations have improved embarrassingly little since the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. The film provides no hope that things will improve any time soon. What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire will be released in the U.S. on August 16th.

Cold Case Hammarskjold

Cold Case Hammarskjold begins as an investigation into the mysterious 1961 death of United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and in the process uncovers a massive multinational conspiracy to eradicate the black population and maintain colonial dominance of the African continent through the deliberate spread of the AIDS virus.

This stranger than fiction story sounds like a wild conspiracy theory until you see the damning evidence that director Mads Brugger has painstakingly compiled. The film is like a real life version of Under the Silver Lake if it were set in Africa instead of Los Angeles.

While the investigative aspect of the film is incredibly compelling, I quickly became annoyed with Brugger, who is overly invested in casting himself as the hero of the story. For a large portion of the film, Brugger cosplays as a colonialist and dictates his findings to two different African secretaries who record his every word with a typewriter for some reason. He leans heavily on this scene throughout the movie as a framing device to explain each clue. The process of Brugger going out to discover new information is interesting. Listening to him regurgitate it to a typist is not.

Overall, it’s a good movie. The batshit discoveries are worth the pompous delivery. Cold Case Hammarskjold is scheduled to be released in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures on August 16th. Three of the seven festival films so far are scheduled for August 16th release dates. I’m going to assume that’s part of a massive conspiracy by the government to re-legalize slavery while Americans are distracted with too much content.

Michael Dixon is a mild mannered accountant by day and a mild mannered movie watcher by night. He will not do your taxes for you. He lives in Austin, Texas with his lovely television and collection of fine whiskies. You can’t purchase his book anywhere because it doesn’t exist.