Giving women a voice
Arobust line-up of films is coming to us in HeForShe Arts Week Bangkok Film Festival. Organised by UN Women, next week’s festival has selected films with messages on gender equality — or inequality — and unfair treatment of women in different cultures (not just in the “Third World” countries, to be sure). It sounds heavy, but the good thing is that the titles picked for the event this year are entertaining and heartfelt on top of being socially relevant.
The movie showcase is part of HeForShe Arts Week, which begins next Wednesday, packed with performances, discussions and guest appearances at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. The film festival itself will take place at SF CentralWorld, starting next Thursday. Admission is free. You can collect tickets 30 minutes before each screening. Visit www.sfcinemacity.com for schedule.
Here are some of the highlights:
MUSTANG
Directed by Deniz Gamze Erguven March 9 at 7.30pm
This 2015 French/Turkish film is certainly the headline act; in fact it’s a shame that this sharp, moving film about five teenage girls in a small Turkish town hasn’t made it to our cinemas before. Starring five young actresses, Mustang is a coming-of-age drama about girls growing up in a house lorded over by their overbearing, conservative father. There’s a hint of Sofia Coppola — the beautiful angst of young women fighting to find their place in a man’s world — but here class status and traditional intolerance are much more persistent.
WADJDA
Directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour March 11 at 5pm
This 2012 Saudi film generated a buzz when it first came out, billed as the first feature-length film to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia — by a female director to boot. The story is cute at the onset — a little girl enters a Koran recital competition to raise money to buy a bicycle — but actually it’s a truthful and bold look at the conservative values that fail to acknowledge women’s dreams and desires. Wadjda of the title is a plucky girl who’s reprimanded for her love of bicycles, while her mother suffers quietly when her husband takes a second wife. It’s still a very relevant film.
FORCE MAJEURE
Directed by Ruben Ostlund March 12 at 7.30pm
Another must-see, from Sweden, deals with masculine embarrassment and bourgeois vulnerability. At a luxurious ski resort, a family is on vacation. One day an avalanche tumbles down the mountain and threatens to hit a restaurant where the father, mother and their child are eating. In a flash of a second, the father is the first to get up and runs for his life — without a glance at his wife and child. But the avalanche doesn’t hit; its force weakens and the alarm is premature. For the rest of this funny and searing film, the father has to deal with the consequences of his apparent selfishness. A smart film that explores husband-wife dynamics and constructs of a family.
WATER
Directed by Deepa Mehta March 12 at 5pm
This 2005 film is by Indian-Canadian director Deepa Mehta, who will attend the festival. Water — the third part of Mehta’s Element Trilogy, which began with Fire and Earth — is set in the 1930s and tells the story of impoverished widows living in a Varanasri temple. It was Canada’s entry to the Oscar’s Best Foreign Language category.
LAND OF GODS
Directed by Goran Paskaljevic March 10 at 7.30pm
The Serbian director has made a film set in Uttrakahand, India, telling the story of a man who returns home after a 40-year absence.
DESERT FLOWER
Directed by Sherry Hormann March 10 at 5pm
This German film is based on the autobiography of Waris Dirie, a Somalian woman who fled Africa to become an American supermodel.