Sometime in the early ’90s, the programmers at the S.F. International Film Festival had a eureka moment. They recognized the educated Bay Area population’s hunger for frank, up-close dispatches from other countries, and assiduously tapped into it. No doubt this demand for documentaries from abroad had something to do with cable news’ shift from behind-the-scenes reporting to surface-level infotainment; whatever the cause, the SFIFF smartly answered the call. Fast forward to the present: U.S. television news has deteriorated even further, and the festival’s lineup of international documentaries has become arguably the most consistently popular section of the program.
A trio of films from Iraq, South Africa and Israel illustrates both the reach and the sociopolitical philosophy of the SFIFF, which begins Thursday, April 19 and continues through May 3 in San Francisco and Berkeley. The valuable yet frustrating verité doc In My Mother’s Arms, by the Iraqi brothers Atia and Mohamed Jabarah al-Daradji, reminds us that life goes on even if Baghdad has fallen off the radar of U.S. news directors and citizens.
The focus is a no-frills orphanage independently operated on a permanent shoestring by a good-looking, chain-smoking fellow named Husham. A heroic iconoclast waging a perpetual uphill battle, Husham is more devoted to the 30-plus boys under his care than he is to his wife and children. While we can’t help but admire his unwavering commitment and good intentions, it becomes increasingly clear that the lack of resources and professional staff limits the extent of his help to shelter, food and tough love.
That’s far from insignificant, of course, but what the children crave — especially the two whom the filmmakers highlight, a talented teenage high-diver and a relentlessly bullied younger boy — is a therapeutic framework for dealing with their loss, grief, self-identity and self-worth. A record of a tiny sliver of postwar nation-building, In My Mother’s Arms (screening Thurs., April 26 and Sun., April 29 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in San Francisco and Wed., May 2 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley) offers little sense of progress and no resolution. And yet, somehow, we come away with a smidgen of hope for Iraq, whether it’s justified or not.
The individual consequences of immense forces is also the underlying theme of Benjamin Kahlmeyer’s patient and generous portrait of a Pretoria family, Meanwhile in Mamelodi. The German director journeyed to South Africa in 2010 with the aim of depicting the lives of people whom the hordes of tourists — as well as the international TV crews and journalists — attending and covering the World Cup matches would never see or meet. (Hence the “meanwhile” of the title.) Fortunately, Kahlmeyer eschews heavy-handed global messages in favor of a character-oriented approach that satisfyingly insinuates us into his subject’s lives.
