KDocsFF reviews: Engrossing Backlash unmasks cyberbullying against women; The Cartel Project peels away a cover up; and more
The Doctrine of Recovery spotlights Indigenous resistance; The Happy Worker probes the modern workplace; Navalny unfolds like a thriller
The Cartel Project.
KDocs Film Festival 2023 runs from February 22 to 26
The Cartel Project (Mexico/France)
At VIFF Centre’s Studio Theatre on February 23 at 1:30 pm
In December, Carleton University hosted a conference in which a group of media professionals intoned darkly about “online abuse” and the growing dangers faced by Canadian journalists. Back in the real world, Jules Giraudat’s The Cartel Project profiles a consortium of 60 international journalists who took up the work of Regina Martínez, a Mexican reporter whose dogged investigation of the Veracruz drug cartel led to her murder in 2012. This brisk and powerful doc peels away the official cover up and homes in on the government officials and cops who facilitated and profited from the narco-trade that cost Martínez her life. There’s much to see here, including a visit to an outdoor fentanyl lab, one of 10 in Veracruz producing 6,000 pills a day (with chemical “precursors” eagerly sold and shipped by companies in China and elsewhere.) The Cartel Project makes the stirring proposal that a decentralized investigative media can expose the truth behind a protected criminal enterprise like Mexico’s drug cartels while avoiding the fate that took Ms. Martínez. Less uplifting is the denouement offered in the film’s final minutes, which makes clear just how far that protection extends. Adrian Mack
Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age (Canada)
At VIFF Centre’s Vancity Theatre on February 22 at 6:25 pm (part of a double feature with The YouTube Effect, at 3:45 pm)
After French feminist YouTuber Marion Seclin posted a video a few years back denouncing street harassment of women, she instantly began receiving crass hate-filled messages. She stopped counting the online insults and threats of rape, physical assault, and death at 40,000. She’s one of four women featured in Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age, Léa Clermont-Dion and Guylaine Maroist’s gripping look at the cyberbullying of women, how its horrific effects can carry over into the real world, and individual ways the film’s subjects are working to create change. Humiliation of women and online gender-based violence shouldn’t be considered “normal” in the digital age, argues Italian politician Laura Boldrini, the first female president of the Chamber of Deputies of Italy (who successfully sued Pontinvrea mayor Matteo Camiciottoliafter he Tweeted that she should be raped “to put a smile back on her face”). Most often there is no protection for women; time and again, the film’s subjects say they went to the police for help and were told there was nothing they could do. As U.S. politician Kiah Morris puts it, online harassment is a form of terrorism “that gives a direct pathway to real violence in the physical world”. She knows this first-hand, having been permanently driven from her home by white supremacists. There’s a brief, shattering interview with Glen Canning, father of Rehtaeh Parsons, who was taken off life support following her attempt to die by suicide due to a vicious, relentless torrent of abuse. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, writer Donna Zuckerberg, also makes a short appearance, sharing her surprise at how “people” who have seen the extent and severity of digital misogyny aren’t more horrified by it. As enraging as it is engrossing. Gail Johnson
The Doctrine of Recovery (USA)
At VIFF Centre’s Vancity Theatre on February 24 at 2:15 pm (on a double feature with Returning Home, at 12:30 pm)
Disputing the nearly 600-year legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery—which, having originated in 1453 from a series of Papal Bulls, gave colonial powers the authority to invade any land not yet “discovered” by Christians—three Indigenous women from distinct backgrounds and tribal affiliations (Crystle Lightning, Casey Camp-Horinek, Juliet Hayes) come together to present a new framework of cooperation rather than possession: The Doctrine of Recovery. Earnest and emotionally gutting, the film unravels colonial ideologies used to justify environmental degradation and the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. Through dynamic storytelling that connects the past and present, screenwriter and director Brišind illustrates how European colonialism generated the climate crisis, shedding light on the Indigenous resistance that has pioneered a movement for ecological interdependence as humanity faces the threat of environmental collapse. Emma Jeffrey
The Happy Worker, or How Work Was Sabotaged (Finland)
At VIFF Centre’s Studio Theatre on February 24 at 7:20 pm
The title is clumsy, but it highlights one of the more intriguing angles in John Webster’s doc, namely that the modern workplace replicates tactics used to demoralize the enemy by World War II resistance fighters in Occupied Europe. No, really! “So somehow,” we’re told, over an image of a declassified Strategic Services Field Manual, “we’ve taken known methods of sabotage and disruption, and turned them into an ordinary day at the office.” Those “methods” have evolved into our present professional-managerial universe of corporate jargon, pointless meetings, ever-proliferating administrative positions, and an overpriced and vacuous CEO topping the ladder of upward failure. Sadly, The Happy Worker doesn’t quite rise to the promise of its first few minutes, focusing instead on an encounter session between a group of burned-out (in some cases suicidal) careerists pondering where it all went wrong. It’s also notable that The Happy Worker shows precisely zero interest in the working class, but you can’t fault the film for knowing its audience—even if they don’t really know themselves, judging by the sometimes painful absence of self-awareness exhibited by the film’s participants. Still, there are zippy graphics and other highlights along the way, especially whenever the late, great David Graeber is on-screen, scruffily making sense of the situation he apprehended with deadly precision in his 2018 book, Bullshit Jobs. Adrian Mack
Navalny (USA)
At VIFF Centre’s Vancity Theatre on February 23 at 7:40 pm
In 2020, Russian dissident and “opposition leader” Alexei Navalny was allegedly poisoned during a flight from Siberia to Moscow, an event met with outrage by Western observers. Central to this fast-paced doc is a sting operation, caught on camera, during which the recovered Navalny poses as a security official and coaxes an admission from one of the Federal Security Service perps responsible for the botched assassination attempt. It’s thrilling stuff. This reviewer, however, doesn’t buy it. While nobody here is defending the Putin regime, the Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning Navalny, produced by CNN Films and HBO Max, torpedoes its own mission by omitting or misrepresenting so much vital information. Most notably, the film glosses over Navalny’s association with right-wing extremists. Directed by Daniel Roher, who ably handled Robbie Robertson and the Band’s story in 2019’s Once Were Brothers, Navalny is exciting like a Tom Clancy novel (and maybe, as far as this reviewer is concerned, equally far-fetched). Adrian Mack
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