2019 OSCAR-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY SHORTS Overall rating: B+
“LIFE OVERTAKES” (Sweden/USA, 39 minutes) My rating: B+
In recent years Sweden has become a haven for refugees fleeing unrest in the Balkans and some of the former Soviet republics. But the children of these displaced families are paying a price.
Resignation Syndrome is a previously undiagnosed condition in which young children retreat from the insecurities of their world by going into a sort of coma. We meet youngsters like Daria, Karen and Leyla who gradually slipped into a dream world. Now they must be bathed and exercised by their parents; most are nourished through feeding tubes.
Horrifying and heartbreaking, John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson’s film shows what these families have gone through. Daria’s parents were targeted by death squads for running an internet system independent of the government. Both were tortured and imprisoned; the mother was raped.
But in Sweden they are uninvited guests who must repeatedly apply for political asylum, and it is that uncertainty about the future — especially the possibility of deportation back to a country that wants to kill them — that triggers Resignation Syndrome in these youngsters.
But get this…once the family is granted permanent asylum in Sweden, the children start improving. As one doctor observes, the parents’ almost mystical sense of hope is somehow transmitted to the sleeping child.
“LEARNING TO SKATEBOARD IN A WARZONE (IF YOU’RE A GIRL)” (UK, 39 minutes) My rating: BFor more than a decade a private school in the heart of Kabul, Afghanistan, has quietly defied that country’s conventional thinking about the role of women by educating girls.
Here girls get the expected instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as daily lessons in personal courage and standing up for one’s rights.
But as Carol Designer’s doc reveals, there’s more. The girls are taught to skateboard in a large gymnasium outfitted with ramps and platforms for various stunts. Yeah, they still wear head scarves and are pretty much covered from head to foot, but now they also sport helmets and knee pads.
All this is done on the QT. Some of the instructors refused to have their faces shown in the film…they live in a dangerous world. Others, like the tough lady in charge of the school, introduces a bit of swagger into their lives: “I’m not afraid of anything except God.”
“IN THE ABSENCE” (South Korea, 28 minutes) My rating: BYi Seung-Jun’s riveting and saddening film focuses on the 2014 sinking of the Korean ferry Sewol; more than half its nearly 500 passengers died.
This doc — which combines news footage, cel phone videos shot by the victims (most of the dead were high school students) and interviews with survivors and rescuers — is essentially a scream of rage.
The Korean Coast Guard was patently unprepared to deal with the disaster, the captain abandoned the ship early on, and passengers were told to stay in their rooms instead of going to the deck where they might have a chance pop rescue.
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