Tribeca Film Festival 2012 Review: Kim Nguyen's "War Witch"

War Witch (Rebelle). 2012. Written and directed by Kim Nguyen. Produced by Pierre Even and Marie-Claude Poulin. Cinematography by Nicolas Bolduc. Edited by Richard Comeau. Production design by Emmanuel Frechette. Costume design by Eric Poirier. Sound by Claude La Haye.

Cast: Rachel Mwanza (Komona), Alain Bastien (Rebel Lieutenant), Serge Kanyinda (Magician), Ralph Prosper (The Butcher), Mizinga Mwinga (Great Tiger), Starlette Mathata (Komona's mother), Alex Herabo (Komona's father).

(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)

I am of two minds when it comes to cinematic depictions of the African continent, in both fiction and documentary films.  On the one hand, the sad reality is that civil war, corruption, political instability, and famine are inescapable features of many African countries, due to the legacy of European colonialism and the subsequent failings of indigenous leaders.  On the other hand, focusing on such subjects leads to a narrow and skewed view of a continent with rich history and culture, especially considering the fact that many films about Africa are made by non-Africans.  However sympathetic and respectful these outsiders to the cultures may be, there often remains an inescapable aspect of voyeuristic tourism, aimed more at appealing to Westerners than to African people themselves.

At first blush Canadian filmmaker Kim Nguyen’s fourth feature War Witch would seem to conform to the usual trends.  Shot in the Democratic Republic of the Congo but not the specific setting of the film, which is rendered as an unnamed sub-Saharan African country, War Witch deals with the phenomenon of child soldiers, a subject that has been explored in numerous films and TV reports.  The usual issues of the loss of innocence and war trauma are dealt with here as well, so there is certainly nothing ground-breaking or particularly novel in what Nguyen offers us, at least as far as subject matter goes.  What elevates this film above many others, however, is the fable-like atmosphere that informs both the performances and the visual aesthetic.  Also taking the film to a uniquely memorable place is the stunning standout performance by the young actress Rachel Mwanza, a nonprofessional found by Nguyen on the streets of the Congo capital of Kinshasa, who went on to win the best actress award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.  Mwanza ably carries War Witch almost entirely on her soldiers, never less than convincing at every turn.

War Witch is built around the conceit of Komona (Mwanza), narrating her story to her unborn child, one product of the war that is waged around her, and of which she has been forced to become an active participant.  Twelve years old as the story begins, Komona is taken away from her village by invading rebel soldiers and drafted into the rebels’ child army, but not before being compelled to do the first killing that will haunt her throughout the rest of the film.  We are taken through the roughly three years following her abduction constituting her war experiences.  Komona’s own parents have been replaced by her rifle; the rebel soldiers tell her and the other children that “this is your mother and father” during their training.  Komona’s sadness and fear begin to be alleviated by Magician (Serge Kanyinda), an albino fellow child soldier who takes it upon himself to befriend and protect her.

During a battle with government soldiers, in which Komona is one of the few survivors, the rebels believe she has magic powers that can predict when they will be attacked and protect them from government bullets, and designate her as a “war witch,” and to eventually become the personal property of the rebel leader Great Tiger (Mizinga Mwinga).  Magician sticks by Komona’s side through all of this, and they eventually make their escape from the rebel army to live with Magician’s uncle the Butcher (Ralph Prosper).  Rachel and Magician are able to lead a somewhat normal existence, which includes a humorous episode in which Rachel sends him on a quest to track down a rare white rooster before she will allow him to marry her.  However, the civil war proves inescapable, and they are both drawn back into its murderous embrace.

War Witch has a dreamy, fairy-tale quality that meshes surprisingly well with the more violent aspects of this tale, and Kim Nguyen ably mixes the fantastical elements of his story with a documentary-like aesthetic to create a richly textured work.  The entire cast, a mix of non-professional Congolese actors and professional Canadian actors offer impressive support to the revelatory central performance by Rachel Mwanza, especially Kanyinda as Magician.

War Witch won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca, as the award for Best Actress in a Narrative Feature for Rachel Mwanza.

New Directors/New Films 2010 Review: Lixin Fan's "Last Train Home"

Last Train Home. 2009. Directed and photographed by Lixin Fan. Produced by Mila Aung-Thwin and Daniel Cross. Edited by Lixin Fan and Mary Stephens. Camera operated by Shaoguang Sun and Lixin Fan. Music by Olivier Alary.

The sharp contrast between the lives in cities and countryside always truck me. Submerged under the glamour of the modern metropolis, the poverty in the vast rural area is overwhelming. As I traveled, I started to focus on the migrant workers, whom I believe have contributed the most to China's prosperity but benefited the least... On a national level, China is dashing to become a richer country. Should tradition, morality and humanity be drowned in a world of tireless rumbling factories is the question we should ask.

-- Lixin Fan, from his director's statement.

Every winter, the world's largest human migration occurs in China, as many of its 130 million migrant workers in the cities make the arduous trek home to their families for the Chinese New Year. These scenes of the teeming masses of humanity clogging train stations, desperately trying to get their only chance all year to visit their loved ones, are some of the most startling images of Lixin Fan's superb, heartbreaking documentary Last Train Home. Fan, a Chinese-born, Montreal-based filmmaker, began his career as a journalist for the Chinese national TV broadcaster CCTV, and as the above epigraph indicates, it was there that he began to be interested in the ever widening gap between the rich in the cities and the poor in the countryside as China embarked on its dizzying rush toward world economic dominance. However, as China isn't exactly a bastion of journalistic freedom, it's not too far off base to speculate that Fan moved into independent filmmaking (as well as to Canada) in order to more freely explore the massive societal upheavals that have occurred in China as a result of its drive toward greater prosperity. What Fan illuminates with penetrating acuity and sometimes uncomfortable intimacy in Last Train Home is the fact that this prosperity is largely the result of the efforts of these many millions of migrant workers, who travel many miles from their rural homelands to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other industrial hubs to toil for many hours in factories to make the products that those in more affluent parts of China and overseas enjoy. However, these workers have very little share in the massive riches that this activity brings to others. They are low-paid, have very little rights to workers' compensation and social services, and, most pertinently for this film, are prevented from bringing their families with them, due to China's very strict residency laws. This serves to break families apart, as parents are forced to be away from their children for months and sometimes years at a time, leaving children to be raised by their grandparents and other relatives. The absence of parental structure and authority causes a whole host of problems, not the least of which is delinquency and aimlessness among the younger generation.

These issues are given indelible life by the case of the Zhang family, the troubled unit Fan focuses on in the film. Zhang Changua and his wife Chen Suqin are factory workers in Guangzhou, who left their village home in Sichuan province and their newborn daughter 17 years earlier to seek work in the cities. They have since regularly sent money home, while their daughter Qin and younger son Yang were raised by their grandmother, so that their children will have enough money to attend school, and hopefully, escape the hard fate of their parents. Tragically, these hopes are dashed by Qin, who has grown up with seething resentment at what she sees as essentially abandonment by her parents, who are virtually strangers to her, since she has seen them so seldom over the years. She feels oppressed and smothered by their expectations of her, and sees their parental authority over her as illegitimate. "All they care about is money," Qin says at one point, her voice dripping with scorn. She also hates having to work on the family farm with her brother and grandmother, and describes her school as a "cage." Her restlessness and yearning to be rid of these strictures on her personal freedom eventually leads to Qin fulfilling her parents' worst nightmare: she drops out of school and becomes a factory worker in the city. Qin doesn't really enjoy this work either, but she takes solace in the fact that she at least earns her own money and can feel that she has greater freedom, however limited or illusory it may be. Qin's mortified mother and concerned father embark on a rescue operation to convince Qin to return to the village and finish her schooling; they also want to ensure that her brother doesn't follow her example. They all go back home for New Year's, Qin sullen and reluctant. Back home, this sets the stage for a dramatic confrontation, one that is predictable if we pay close attention to Qin's moods, but is no less shocking and tragic.

Last Train Home bears some stylistic resemblance to another recent Canadian documentary about China, Yung Chang's Up the Yangtze, which followed stories centering around the Three Gorges Dam project. Fan worked on that film as an associate producer and a sound man, and Chang was a consultant on Fan's film. Both directors share an emphasis on individual stories set against a larger societal backdrop, and making clear how the macro and micro aspects of their subjects' situations entwine. Fan eschews voiceover and uses music sparingly, constructing his documentary with a dramatic arc similar to fictional films. Fan prominently name-checks Jia Zhang-ke in interviews as a major influence; and indeed, Fan's concerns dovetail with Jia's ongoing project to record the effects of China's massive social changes on the daily lives of people. Fan, however, brings an intense intimacy to his material that is all his own. Fan's camera (he did his own cinematography) is an unseen character of this drama; it is not the Frederick Wiseman-like objective fly-on-the-wall, but rather a sympathetic confidante. Fan's prodigious gifts of observation (in abundant evidence in his depiction of the massive crush of travelers at the Guangzhou train station, just barely controllable by the police) honor all his subjects, whether they are the main characters like the Zhangs' or someone glimpsed for a few seconds, affording them the respect and dignity that they are too often denied. The overwheming impression that I took away from Last Train Home was not how unique the Zhangs were, but to the contrary, how typical they were. A film just as compelling could conceivably be made of the lives of any of the millions taking the trains every year, and I think this is Fan's main contention. A country that compels so many to tear apart their own families and toil away at numbing, repetitive labor with little to look forward to except a never-ending struggle, is a country that is deeply in trouble, despite the efforts of governments to whitewash this fact, or offer temporary distractions such as the Olympics. It is a situation that will eventually prove to be unsustainable. Last Train Home, beyond being a deeply moving work of art, is a passionate wake-up call, vividly illuminating issues that the powers that be will ignore to their peril.

Last Train Home screens tomorrow at 12pm at the Walter Reade Theater as part of New Directors/New Films 2010. It will be released later this summer by Zeitgeist Films. Click here to purchase tickets.