This was the first film that i watched at the Mumbai Film Festival 2009.
The film was in the category of docu drama. It documented a story and life line of people since the year 1996 so it would not be wrong to say that the film was in the making for the last 13 years at the least!
The film is about this group of people who have settled on a large barren land near South Beijing railway station. These are the people who have suffered under the autocratic rule of the Chinese premier. These people are asked to file petitions i.e their grievances in the ‘Petition Office’ located in South Beijing and hence they have come there…but the reality is that when these people file petitions they are further tortured by the dictatorship as such depriving them further from justice which they so persistently and legally seek.
What happens often with documentaries is that they end up being preachy and monotonous but this one does not and there is a reason for that.
In the film we see the journey of a mother and daughter- very crisply handled- wherein we see the daughter way back in 1996 talking about her mother’s fight and trauma. However as a decade goes by the daughter finds herself discouraging her mother from their fight against the imperial rule as the daughter has dreams of having a reasonable life in the city away from the slums and poverty. The mother is adamant as a result the daughter leaves the house and flees with her boyfriend. All of this is caught in camera. The mother’s reaction to being deserted by her daughter is too painful and real. Later on the daughter returns having settled successfully in the city having married her boyfriend and also now having her child. Even now her mother refuses to go with the daughter!
Besides this story there is another one of an old granny whose son has now grown into a reasonably successful man and has been asking his mother to let go of her want for justice and return home but his old haggard mother is determined to fight, then again there are these revolutionaries who begin to mobilized the victims but are suppressed by being arrested and tortured by the police. All these stories give the documentary a flow and direction.
The most striking point I
felt was how the film opens on a large barren land outside the South Berlin railway station housing these poor petitioners and at the end of the film the same land has become the sight for the 2008 Beijing Olympic stadium! Sights that we marveled at a year ago seem disturbing when we realize the people who were displaced in order to make the mega event possible.
Lastly the film ends on these people continuing to stay under the now constructed stadium with not even a ray of light entering their homes and yet the ray of hope for justice not leaving their hearts!
This is the second film that i saw at the Mumbai fil Fest 2009. Had this been a film seen on the third or the fourth day iw ould have walked out half way!
amas’, the Palestinians in Gaza consider themselves victims of Israeli violence as a result of American ulterior motives. As such the Palestinians in Gaza are in complete support of the Gaza.
