Newport This Week

Stellar Docs Ready to Stream Pre-Oscars

FILM REVIEW


A scene from the Netflix documentary “American Factory,” about a Chinese owned glass factory that opens in a former GM plant in Ohio.

A scene from the Netflix documentary “American Factory,” about a Chinese owned glass factory that opens in a former GM plant in Ohio.

The Academy Awards’ best documentary category provides the most consistently illuminating and powerful, if troubling and even bleak films of any given year. This year’s five nominees are no exception. In fact, they represent just a fraction of the outstanding documentaries released in 2019. I wrote about “Honeyland,” deservedly nominated for both best documentary and best international feature, in the Jan. 9 issue of Newport This Week. The film and the four other nominated documentaries are now available on Netflix or other streaming services, so audiences can see them before the Oscar telecast on Feb. 9. “American Factory” (Netflix)

After a General Motors factory in Dayton, Ohio closed in 2008, the hopes of some 20,000 workers who’d lost their jobs were bolstered when the Fuyao Glass Company of China opened a plant in the former GM building in 2014. At first, it seemed promising. Even though many former GM workers were hired back at half their union wages, most were glad to finally be employed again, manufacturing windshields for cars and trucks.

“For Sama,” a gripping and personal look at the Syrian civil war, is available on PBS.org

“For Sama,” a gripping and personal look at the Syrian civil war, is available on PBS.org

Documentarians Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert chronicled the original plant’s final days for their Oscar-nominated 2009 short “The Last Truck.” Initially, their verité look at the culture clash of Chinese and American workers is amusing. But soon the demands of the Chinese owner, called Chairman, to increase production at the risk of employee and environmental safety and to institute 12-hour workdays, including weekends, becomes untenable. One wounded foreman says he never suffered a workplace injury over several decades with GM. The frustrated American workers try to unionize but are battled at every turn and most lose their jobs, replaced by Chinese workers who leave their families behind. “American Factory” is a disturbing economic exposé about the way we live now, and a cautionary tale about the vanishing middle class. For Sama (pbs.org)

Loren King is an arts and entertainment writer whose work appears regularly in The Boston Globe and other publications.

Loren King is an arts and entertainment writer whose work appears regularly in The Boston Globe and other publications.

“We never thought the world would let this happen.” That’s the haunting phrase from 26-year old filmmaker and activist Waad al-Kateab, who chronicles her life during the five years that her beloved city of Aleppo, Syria was destroyed by the government of Bashar al-Assad. If the choice is to confront the violence, inhumanity and senselessness of war, this brutal, heart-wrenching film is essential viewing.

Not only do we see in real time the devastation of Aleppo and the murder of its civilians, including children, we also see lives that continue to be lived. Al-Kateab marries Hamza, a medical student, and together they volunteer at a makeshift hospital in Aleppo, where they attend the wounded and offer comfort to inconsolable survivors.

They and others continue to protest Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive dictatorship, despite the escalating violence. Al-Kateab and co-director Edward Watts capture not just the terrifying bombings but the families living through them, trying to maintain as normal a life as possible for their kids. The film’s focus is on Al-Kateab’s baby Sama. The birth of a child into the chaos and destruction becomes a metaphor for hope, survival and questions about parental responsibility, as al-Kateab wonders if it’s fair to bring children into such a place and time. “For Sama” won Best Documentary at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival and the 2019 SXSW Film Festival for good reason. Much like Jehane Noujaim’s 2013 documentary “The Square,” about the uprisings in Egypt, the filmmakers’ raw footage of bombs striking is harrowing and unflinching. But they also show life in the midst of all the agony. “The Cave” (Amazon Prime)

Like “For Sama,” this eye-opening but harrowing film from Feras Fayyad (“Last Men in Aleppo”) also depicts in grueling detail the nightmare facing Syrians trapped in the middle of a civil war. Fayyad focuses on the heroic efforts of the handful of medical personnel who remain in the heavily bombed city of Ghouta and tend to the wounded in a subterranean hospital called “the cave.” The central figure is young pediatrician Amani Ballour, who steps up to manage the makeshift hospital despite opposition from some because she is a woman. Dr. Ballour stifles her own rage and pain as she administers to the victims, mostly children, of dictator Bashar al-Assad’s relentless bombing. This film is even more wrenching than “For Sama,” but Amani Ballour is an unforgettable figure. The Edge of Democracy (Netflix)

In another cautionary tale that will resonate with many American viewers, Brazilian actor-writer-director Petra Costa’s latest film is a personal and powerful examination of the recent political upheaval in Brazil that led to the oppressive far-right regime of president Jair Bolsonaro.

Costa narrates in the first person as she tries to make sense of events that pushed her homeland toward authoritarianism. As she recounts her own history as the daughter of two activists who were exiled and imprisoned for opposing Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1980s and the current state of corruption, abuse of power and polarization, her outrage and sorrow are palpable and heartbreaking. “I fear our democracy was nothing but a short-lived dream,” she says.

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