Movie reviews

HER DOCS FILM FESTIVAL

CALL ME INTERN

Recommended. Shocks you with the extent of young workforce exploitation: the US, Europe, even the UN. But also explains market mechanisms which gives both the smaller and the bigger picture of the issue of unpaid internships. Masterfully cut. Expert commentary to the point. Most importantly: an unpaid internship does not advance your career. 

BRAZEN

Recommended. 10 short animations about brave women from all over the world and various epochs and cultures who revolutionised our world. A fantastic bold music theme emphasises their audacity. This cartoon series features such strong, independent women I found it even intimidating. You see how much effort or even deception is needed to matter in life. But it's also revelatory how much we owe to those few women. The animations are lucid, using the pictures to display their stories comprehensibly, limiting the verbal narratives to the women's reactions to what we see happening in their lives. The protagonists are all admirably strong, never letting others to put them off. It's also unsettling how many vital problems are overlooked by men. Luckily those women didn't give a damn what others would think of them. They were not afraid either of criticism or rejection and would just get their own way. 

The film set was followed by a workshop for children which was inspiring even to an adult woman like me. And I'm impressed how smart and self-confident the girls were. 

ZE NOEMEN ME BABOE (THEY CALL ME BABU)

Recommended. A compilation of many testimonies of Indonesian nannies in Dutch households during the colonial rule, with period footage collected and cut so cleverly the images become one story. It's touching, warm but also fills you in on the times of Dutch occupation of Indonesia, Nazi of the Netherlands and Japanese of Dutch Indonesia. Beautifully told from a nanny's point of view. The archive footage is black and white but wonderfully shot, you can even see water glistening in the sun. 

93QUEEN

Recommended. About Ezras Nashim, the first women-staffed ambulance service in the large Brooklyn Hasidic community, and its charismatic leader. You follow Rachel Freier strive to bake plenty of hallahs at home, run for the civil law judge and kickstart the much needed emergency service for women. It's astonishing how badly the male competitors are trying to put her down. All the more I admire her thinking: "I am hurt, I've been hurt before, I surely will be hurt. That's life." Watches almost like a thriller.