Something to watch tonight: Friday 28 February

It’s been a hard week here at F&S Central and I don’t recom­mend watch­ing all five of the 2025 Oscar-nominated fea­tures over three nights. It’s too rough. You need a Pixar-style pal­ate cleanser between each one.

There’s no light enter­tain­ment altern­at­ive in the list of nom­in­ees this year. As someone com­men­ted online, there’s no 50 Feet from Stardom or Summer of Soul. The frothy bio­graphy of Christopher Reeve, Super/Man, must have come close but the doc­u­ment­ary branch of the Academy have taken the tem­per­at­ure of the times and chosen the most import­ant, the most urgent, from what’s on offer.

All five of these films are about good people star­ing down or stav­ing off the real­ity of pure evil – there’s no oth­er way to put it. The Ukrainian artists who have been forced to take up arms to defend their home­land against an imper­i­al­ist dic­tat­or. A journ­al­ist urging Japan to reck­on with their all-too relaxed atti­tude to sexu­al viol­ence against women at huge cost to her own men­tal and phys­ic­al health. Indigenous North Americans dis­cov­er­ing the truth about the scale of the abuse heaped upon them for gen­er­a­tions. Black American artists forced to recon­cile their sup­port for cul­tur­al out­reach in the 60s with the colo­ni­al wicked­ness per­pet­rated in their name. And Palestinian West Bank res­id­ents try­ing in vain to save their com­munit­ies as Israel demol­ishes their homes and their schools.

Like I said, evil.

At the end of World War II, the Belgian Congo became glob­ally stra­tegic when their depos­its of Uranium became the key ingredi­ent in the new atom­ic arms race. Fifteen years later, in 1960, a former beer sales­man named Patrice Lumumba led the Congo to peace­ful inde­pend­ence from Belgium but with­in five days of his gov­ern­ment tak­ing office, the Belgians (with the assist­ance of oth­er colo­ni­al powers, glob­al cor­por­ate interests and – most scan­dal­ously – the United Nations) pro­voked the min­er­al rich Katanga province of the Congo to declare its own inde­pend­ence prompt­ing a civil war that is still defin­ing the region today.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (Johan Grimonperez) tells an enra­ging story of colo­ni­al­ism and con­tex­tu­al­ises it with the United States’ own struggles with civil rights occur­ring at the same time. The music of jazz musi­cians like Nina Simone, Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie was being used by Voice of America radio to attract audi­ences for their cap­it­al­ist pro­pa­ganda. They were often sent on tours to far off places by the State Department as cul­tur­al ambas­sad­ors. When Louis Armstrong real­ised his con­certs in the Congo (while Lumumba was under house arrest) were just a smokescreen for CIA sup­port of the rebel­lion, he threatened to renounce his US cit­izen­ship and become a cit­izen of Ghana.

I’m sure that Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy is aware of the Congolese his­tory and will know all too well what can hap­pen to the people who live on top of the pre­cious mater­i­als that are desired by the so-called ‘great powers’.

No Other Land (co-written and dir­ec­ted by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor) has fam­ously not found any com­mer­cial dis­tri­bu­tion des­pite uni­ver­sal acclaim and awards recog­ni­tion, but that has to be under­stand­able. After all, who would will­ingly pay money to watch the Israeli Defence Force demol­ish a school for no reas­on oth­er than they want to make room for anoth­er illeg­al settlement.

I’m being sar­cast­ic. Everyone should pay money for this. Everyone should go out of their way to see what crimes are being com­mit­ted with our gov­ern­ments’ tacit approv­al. It is impossible not to be enraged by the sight of this brazen exer­cise of colo­ni­al power. How do the Israelis sleep at night after they have bull­dozed yet more ancient dwell­ings in the name of ‘secur­ity’?

Israel is now bomb­ing Damascus and oth­er tar­gets in newly lib­er­ated Syria, as well as con­tinu­ing to occupy parts of Lebanon. The Syrians have barely had time to form a gov­ern­ment before their neigh­bours have star­ted attack­ing them. I read a quote from an Israeli politi­cian earli­er this week, defend­ing the prac­tice, say­ing that “Israel has no bor­ders.” Read into that what you will.

Less glob­ally impact­ful, per­haps – more domest­ic, more per­son­al – but no less evil, is the per­pet­rat­or of the 2015 sex crime against journ­al­ist Shiori Itō. Noriyuki Yamaguchi was the Washington D.C. bur­eau chief for Tokyo Broadcasting System when he drugged Ito at a party, took her in a taxi to his hotel and raped her. While the film centres on Itō’s attempts to get justice, the shock­ing con­text that she reveals is about Japanese atti­tudes to sex crimes and the unwill­ing­ness of wit­nesses to come for­ward in order to pro­tect their, and their employer’s, reputations.

Yamaguchi was well con­nec­ted and pro­tec­ted at very high levels and Itō’s struggle takes a shock­ing toll.

As glob­al super­powers start nego­ti­at­ing Ukraine’s future and divid­ing up the country’s bounty, it pays to remem­ber those who have been doing the defend­ing on the ground over the last three years, the over­whelm­ing num­ber being former civilians.

Slava and his part­ner Anya are artists. Slava makes del­ic­ate por­cel­ain mod­els – of dragons and oth­er fanci­ful creatures – and Anya dec­or­ates them beau­ti­fully. Slava is also an expert rifle shot and trains new recruits as well as fight­ing Russians on the con­tested front line around Bakhmut (“only ten minutes drive”, says Anya, from their apart­ment in badly dam­aged Kharkiv).

Slava’s spe­cial forces squad are called “Saigon” and con­sist of an IT busi­ness ana­lyst, a graph­ic design­er and a build­ing con­tract­or among oth­ers. They fly drones to help tar­get Russian tanks, fire mor­tars of their own, risk their own lives to help infantry retreat when the heat is too much. Which it often is.

Meanwhile, Anya dec­or­ates their drones to make them laugh.

Everyone should see this film so that we know who our lords and mas­ters are selling out when they decide that res­ist­ing fas­cism is too hard or too expens­ive. Slava and Anya (and their paint­er friend Andrey who drove his fam­ily to the Polish bor­der in a car with with no brakes so they could be safe) main­tain that art, beauty and love are why they keep going. I was reminded of a quote from (I think) Winston Churchill when asked why spend money on the arts dur­ing war­time said some­thing like, “Dear boy, without art, what are we fight­ing for?”

Sugarcane (Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie) is about the dis­cov­ery and fur­ther invest­ig­a­tion of dec­ades of abuse in Catholic res­id­en­tial schools across North America and I reviewed it here a couple of months ago:

Astonishingly, many of these vic­tims have kept their Catholic faith. Gilbert joins a group that travels to Rome for an audi­ence with Pope Francis, an abused person’s hope that they may yet bask in the love of their abuser. He has a meet­ing with the cur­rent head of the order that ran St. Joseph’s who, while clearly moved and troubled by what had been done in his name, tries to tell us that ‘we had a bad 100 years or so there, but we are try­ing to do better’.

The con­clu­sion I came to is that the Catholic Church has giv­en up any right to a social license and should simply be dis­solved and all its riches shared among its adher­ents – the poorest first.

Equally heart­break­ing is that the bur­den of heal­ing the mul­tiple gen­er­a­tions affected falls on their own com­munity. “We don’t nor­mally do this,” says the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer as he opens up file after file of unsolved – often unin­vestig­ated – hein­ous crimes so that the tri­bal invest­ig­at­ors can start put­ting the pieces togeth­er, dec­ades later.

I have no idea which of these five will get to cel­eb­rate at the Oscars on Monday after­noon NZT. What I do know is that each of them shows us some­thing des­per­ately sad about human soci­ety and human nature. Whichever one wins, it feels like we’ve all lost.

Where to watch Soundtrack to a Coup d’État

Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada, India : Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Streaming on KinoFilm

UK: Digital rental

Where to watch No Other Land

Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada, India, USA: Not cur­rently avail­able online

UK: Digital rental

Where to watch Black Box Diaries

Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada: Streaming on HollywoodSuite

India : Not cur­rently avail­able online 

USA: Streaming on Paramount+ or Fubo

UK: Digital purchase

Where to watch Porcelain War

Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada, India, USA, UK : Not cur­rently avail­able online

Where to watch Sugarcane

Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, UK: Streaming on DocPlay

India: Streaming on Hotstar

USA: Streaming on Disney+ or Hulu