Category Archives: Film

Coming to DVD and VOD today, Tuesday, May 6: DESERT RIDERS

Vic Sarin’s investigation into child exploitation in Middle Eastern camel racing debuted at Vancouver in 2011. It went on to screen at IDFA, One World, and Thessaloniki Doc, among other fests.

Camel racing grew from a haphazardly organized local pastime to a point of international pride among the Middle East’s elite. With the sport’s development came the need for jockeys – the lighter, the better – leading to the industrywide practice of utilizing child riders, and, inevitably, a black market in child trafficking to meet the demand. Boys from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sudan were routinely sold into indentured servitude by family or acquaintances, sometimes knowingly, but often not, and subjected to harsh working conditions, forced hormone injections to keep them from growing, and, often, physical and sexual abuse. Documentary evidence of their plight helped to mobilize American intervention, ultimately leading the UAE in 2005 to ban jockeys under the age of fifteen from competing. Sarin’s film, unconnected to the early doc, revisits the story, while also checking in on the repatriation of the exploited children and the struggles many have had to deal with from their traumatic experiences, and, poignantly, from re-entering families and communities that may not be as welcoming as one might expect. This rough-hewn talking heads survey is workmanlike at best, spending far too much time on background for a controversy that largely took place a decade ago, and not enough time on the present-day circumstances of its subjects, who fail to be particularly individuated here.

Coming to theatres this Friday, May 2: KIDNAPPED FOR CHRIST

Kate S Logan’s look at a disturbing Evangelical Christian behavior modification facility made its debut at Slamdance earlier this year, winning the documentary audience award. It has gone on to screen at Big Sky, Cleveland, Nashville, Miami Gay, and Phoenix.

Despite its scenic setting in the Dominic Republic, Escuela Caribe is hardly a welcome getaway for its inhabitants, teenagers who have been abducted from their homes with the consent of their parents for perceived behavioral problems. Forced to endure the isolation and ludicrously strict rules of their new, bootcamp-like environment, teens like Logan’s primary subject, David, live in limbo, not even guaranteed of release after they turn eighteen. While some inmates briefly reveal some past behavior that might give cause to their parents’ concerns, David is only there because he came out to his parents. When he turns to Logan for help, asking her to pass a note back to his friends about his predicament, this shifts the direction of the student filmmaker’s project to question the rehabilitation function of the facility and to detail the struggle to secure his freedom. Unfortunately, at the same time, this seems to grant Logan license to make herself an active participant in the film, a distracting approach which I’ve written about before and remain convinced is, as is the case here, usually unnecessary. Ultimately, the idea behind the film is much more compelling than the execution, though it should be noted that, at least initially, Logan is able to get some surprisingly candid and eye-opening interviews with the institution’s staff.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, April 29: APPROVED FOR ADOPTION

Jung and Laurent Boileau’s animated pseudo-doc memoir debuted at the Annecy Animation fest in 2012. It went on to screen at Gijon, Torino, NY’s Children fest, DocsBarcelona. Sydney, AFI Docs, CPH:DOX, and several animation fests around the world.

I previously wrote about the film out of AFI Docs here.