THIS IS JUST A MOVIE!!!

To your surprise there are no fireworks at all. Instead you see an enormous projection in the sky which says: “The End. 2016 was a movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan, based on the eponymous book by Stephen King. Executive producers: David Lynch and David Cronenberg”. And the credits roll on. Wow, such a relief knowing that all these horrible things were pure fiction. You should’ve known all along reality could never be THIS perverse. This year was just a bad movie that never wanted to come to and end… until now!

Now we can rejoice: we still live in a progressive world, the values of diversity and tolerance prevail in the UK, Trump will never become president, democracy is strong in Latin America and David Bowie is still singing “Golden years, come get up my baby, look at that sky, life’s begun!”

Your favourite horror classics

Directed by and starring Drew Casson who also co-writes the movie with Jess Cleverly, The Darkest Dawn is a small experimental project by new indie studio Wildseed Studios. The project, which is backed by the legendary Pinewood Studios, stars a host of well-known YouTubers. Built mostly, but not entirely, on the strength of the online fame of its actors, the film does its best to bring a fresh twist on the well-worn found footage genre. Think Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008) with hints of The Walking Dead (Preston A. Whitmore II, 1995) thrown in for good measure.

The film charts the adventures of two sisters, Chloe (Bethan Mary Leadley) and Sam (Cherry Wallis) trying to survive in the immediate aftermath of what appears to be an alien invasion, with the whole proceedings recorded by 16-year-old Chloe, using a camcorder we see her receive as a birthday present in the first frame of the movie. Things quickly descend into a hellish post-apocalyptic nightmare when the girls are forced to face to a new violent world of “kill or be killed”. From then on, the narrative falls into the usual “survivor in-fighting” tropes and never quite recovers from way too many story strands and more characters than necessary.

As indie sci-fi movies go, The Darkest Dawn does an adequate job by trying to tell a fairly straightforward story; it is however impossible to ignore its obvious shortcomings. The film is let down by a predictable narrative, not helped in the slightest by a fairly generic dialogue and a less than convincing cast. But it isn’t all bad –The Darkest Dawn has a solid storyline, and props must be given to the CGI department especially in its depiction of the alien warships and other warfare sequences which could rival any sci-fi film franchise. The film could however have done with a tidier screenplay and a more convincing dialogue.

It is also important to point out that Drew Casson does a great job as director (but less so as an actor) and what ultimately lets the film down isn’t so much technical ability, but rather the flimsy script and a cast that isn’t altogether bothered by sounding or looking convincing. The exception is Bethan Mary Leadley who does a good enough job even if she isn’t given much to work with in the first place. On the whole, The Darkest Dawn is rather entertaining, and in the right hands might have been a great little indie sci-fi movie a la Monsters (Gareth Edwards, 2010). Props must be given for all involved in this interesting project and for seeing it through considering that it was made on a shoestring.

The Darkest Dawn is showing in Bristol at the Watershed between January 1st-5th, and at Home in Manchester on 3rd January.

Don’t forget to watch the film trailer below:

When Julius Caesar introduced his calendar in 45 BC, he made January 1st the start of the year. Though the Julian calendar was not perfect, the idea of measuring time became worthy of serious contemplation. Naturally by this time of the year, people rethink life and readjust their plans for the following year, hoping that it will be different and bring something new. I use films as a tool in order to rethink life. I had the privilege of watching again Pollock (Ed Harris, 2001) earlier this month and that experience led me to an astonishing discovery: we want change but we are almost never ready for it.

In 1942, Paul Jackson Pollock was an unknown painter. He lived in a small flat in New York with his future wife, the also painter, Lee Krasner, who was determinated to introduce Pollock to a wealthy curator. Pollock worked tirelessly. His paintings had the same flavour of Cubism and Surrealism, but Pollock was instinctively after something completely new. He wanted to make a breakthrough.

One day the couple received the visit of Howard Putzel, who was Peggy Guggeinheim‘s assistant. Peggy had opened her art gallery in Manhattan in October that year. Married to the Surrealist Max Ernst, she held temporary exhibitions of leading European artists, such as Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí, Piet Mondrian and Francis Picabia, and of several then unknown young Americans, such as Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Mark Rothko, David Hare and Robert de Niro Sr, father of the actor Robert de Niro. During a collective exhibition, Jackson Pollock became the darling of the gallery. As a consequence, Peggy commissioned Pollock to create a mural for the gates of her new townhouse.

Pollock and Krasner were thrilled with this opportunity but Pollock knew he had to create something powerful under pressure. Six months after the commission, Pollock had an epiphany. Accidently, by dropping paint on the floor, Pollock liberated himself from the vertical constraints of the canvas. He started painting in a completely abstract manner. He created a “drip style”, marked by the use of sticks, trowels, or knives to drip and splatter paint, as well as pouring paint directly from the can. His mural revolutionised art history.

Like art, like cinema

But how did Pollock make people rethink art? In Ed Harris’s biopic movie (he both directed the movie and starred as the protagonist), Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden) tries to draw Howard Putzel’s attention in very peculiar ways. She struggles to define her lover’s work in words. She describes it as a hybrid of two or three other painters who belonged to the School of French Painting, but indeed no artist influenced Pollock’s work. It is very clear that Putzel is in front of something totally new but at the same time he is trying to stick a category label on the work. He cannot figure out something he doesn’t know. This is what film critics do. This is what we all do when we rethink 2016 and plan 2017. Despite wanting something new, we relish familiar elements. We want changes but we resist adaptation. We want to refresh ourselves but we don’t like to suffer the unbalance.

An Italian magazine defined Pollock as a “povero (poor) Picasso”, which infuriated Pollock. There was nothing poor in his art. It was the pure expression of a tormented soul. Pollock was a compulsive drinker, and Harris’s performance magnifies his unbalanced personality. In an interview to Life Magazine, Pollock said that he admired Kandinsky but he didn’t copy the Russian painter. He invoked him instead. It was the spiritual element in art that both Kandinsky and Pollock were after. The accident. The fracture. In other words, Abstract Expressionism.

Oh, no, sorry readers. I am trying to welcome the new but I fell into the same trap again. I have just categorised Pollock.

Pollock in London

After the screening of Pollock earlier this month at the Curzon Soho in London, Ed Harris came to stage and commented: “Oh, you are all here. Thanks for staying until the end”. Harris knows he had pushed his limits while filming and enacting Jackson Pollock. The feature is intense and watching it demands energy. He directed another film later – the not-so-popular Appaloosa, 2008 -, and then he came back to acting. Indeed there was no need for Harris to direct a second movie. He had already achieved perfection in Pollock. Harris captured the spiritual element in Pollock’s character in such a way that I felt Harris was painting exactly like Pollock, as if painter’s spirit had possessed his body. In fact Ed Harris’s love for the painter grew for ten years, from the moment his father gave him the biography ‘To a Violent Grave’. His father bought the book because he thought that the painter resembled his son physically.

Pollock broke the conventions. His wife once said “I have never been able to understand the artist whose image never changes”. And that is exactly what Pollock did. He expressed his feelings rather than illustrated something. Feelings change. People change. If you happen to see Pollock’s paintings twice within a gap of 20 years, you won’t see the same thing. You won’t see a house, a tree or a woman; you’ll see yourself and the artist.

So here is the lesson Pollock taught me. Don’t be anxious, don’t run for it, what’s new will come. Maybe by chance, maybe by accident, just like Pollock’s unintentional paint spill on Peggy’s mural. Or just like when Ed Harris’s father gave his son Pollock’s biography. Happy New Year!

In time: you can order Pollock via Amazon. You can also enjoy Pollock’s paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The Abstract Expressionism exhibition finishes on January 2nd. More info here.

A backyard infested with ants, a blocked kitchen sink filled with red liquid, shabby houses, derelict trailers, unsupervised children and lost youth ahoy. This is more or less the Texas where 17-year-old Layla (Devon Keller) has to juggle her career ambitions and deeply reactionary family with a callous society and her quickly-changing body. This is a mammoth task even for a mature and emotionally-balanced adult, let alone for the petite adolescent.

She has just won a sought-after scholarship to study in “cool” Austin, only to find out that an unwanted teenage pregnancy could prevent her career dream from becoming true. Because she’s under 18, she needs her parent’s permission before being allowed an abortion, but her father refuses to abide, instead delivering a furious and expletive-laden rant to the hapless young lady.

The Lone Star State has very strange laws: at 16 a girl can drive, vote, buy a gun, and be sent to prison, but she cannot have an abortion unless her parents agree. According to Layla’s father, it’s the girl who’s at fault for claiming control over her body: “you are being immature, we’re going to take care of this as a family”. Religious doctrine and state legislation can destroy a young woman’s life by conveniently denying their body rights, and instead demonising them for simply having had sex. The father makes it clear: “it’s her fault”.

Layla is constantly punished by a deeply savage capitalistic system does not seem to cater for her happiness and wellbeing. The system obliges her to choose between a scholarship for an expensive university or being a teenage mum supported by parents at home. She is advised: “if you quit here you quit everywhere”, as the strenuous university selection process gives no second chances. This is a very perverse choice to make. But the same system prevents her from making this choice, leaving it to her parents instead. This is doubly brutal.

The healthcare system is equally barbarous. She cannot get any support unless she’s able to pay for it, and at one point a teenage friend has to use her pocket money in order to fund the medication to her friend. And she’s denied a doctor in an urgent and life-threatening episode at the end of the movie.

Kansas-born 38-year female filmmaker Micah Magee concocted a dark tale of female courage at the face of a society that defranchises and chastens them. It is also an indicment of a failed state. The photography is somber, the acting is poignant and yet austere. There are no melodramatic and exploitative devices, very little extradiegetic music, and the narrative instead relies on the subtle and yet cruel twists of virtue and twists of fate.

Now available for the first time in the UK, Petting Zoo premiered at the Berlinale and has since received various awards in international film festivals. It is released directly by the filmmaker through the Sundance Institute Artist Services Initiative, a self-distribution platform for independent filmmakers.

Micah Magee’s Petting Zoo will see its digital release on iTunes, GooglePlay and Amazon on New Year’s Day 2017 – just click here for more information.

Meanwhile, you can watch the film trailer below:

The letter “X” has at least three very different connotations. It represents the unknown, as in “X-factor”, it can also signify the profane (“X-rated”), but it can also mean holy (the “X” in “Xmas” comes from the Greek letter Chi, the first one in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ). But never before you have seen the three meanings combined in one: Tangerine is full of secrets, it’s sacred and it’s profane, all at once and on Christmas Eve.

Entirely set on Christmas Eve, this micro-budget movie sounds like the antipode of the snowy, Christian and holy holiday. It is set in the sunny and tawny-hued streets of Los Angeles, its protagonists are transgender sex workers and there is ardent commotion throughout most of the movie. Yet this is one of the most poignant Christmas movies that you will see in your life, urgent in its candour and integrity. This is sobering holiday entertainment, as it rescues humanity from the most unlikely places and situations: a lonely performance in an empty club, a blow-job in a car wash, a transphobic attack, a wig soaked with urine.

Transsexual prostitute Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) has just finished a 28-day prison sentence when she meets her colleague Alexandra (Mya Taylor) in a donut shop in a mundane and soulless street of Hollywood. She reveals that Sin Dee’s boyfriend and pimp Chester is cheating on her with a woman called Dinah. Sin-Dee begans a frantic search for her man and his alleged dalliance. We are taken on a journey of Las Angeles underworld, replete with wigs, high heels, brothels, drugs and, but also bubbling with fervent love, desire and friendship.

Armenian cab driver Razmik has befriended Sin-Dee and Alexandra, and developed a trusting relationship with latter. He is determined to have sex this Christmas eve, but he ejects a prostitute from his car upon finding out that she is cisgender. It’s his good friend Alexandra instead who pleases the man before he heads home for a Christmas meal with his conservative family. But something goes awry when Razmik intrusive mother-in-law stalks him after dinner, and this is when the underground and the mainstream worlds collide, the result is a hilarious and colourful culture shock explosion.

Tangerine is masterpiece not just because it was entirely shot on an iPhone 5s and uses non-profissional actors in their chosen skin (a more mainstream Hollywood film would’ve opted for cis females for the transgender roles, in gesture compatible to blackfacing). The film excels because underneath the lipstick and the wigs there’s abundant warmth and kindness, which comes out in very awkward yet genuine deeds. They include sharing a pipe of crystal meth, attending a lonely club performance (it turns out Alexandra paid the club to sing) and the very last moment of the film, which will leave you speechless in its puerile gentleness. At first Sin-Dee and Alexandra seemed fiercily manipulative and individualistic, but it in the end it is the spirit of Christmas that prevails!

Few films epitomise dirt and the TP factor as accurately as Tangerine does. For DMovies, this is the ultimate Christmas movie, complete with with very subversive angels and a beautifully transgressive message of hope.

You can buy Tangerine on DVD and Blu-ray at your closest mall or music shop. This is the first time it available for purchase at Christmas. You can buy online by clicking here.

Out on Amazon Prime on Sunday, May 2nd (2021).

Don’t for get to watch the hilarious film trailer below:

Casting is a process for selecting individuals will work best with a certain director and film crew. Actors know that they are being observed and appreciated. That’s what a filmmaker gives them. And if a director thinks they are doing something wrong, they shouldn’t hesitate to point them in the right direction. The filmmaker is the orchestrator, the maestro. But this does not mean that they have a carte blanche to humiliate or to embarass actors.

On the other hand, some filmmakers envisage people the way a lion perceives a gazelle. They focus exclusively on the art they are creating. They can devise extreme situations in the name of art. They want to elicit a certain reaction from their actors, and they don’t care about anything else. It is almost like a male brain works during sex. It’s the fixed idea or in, other words, they are driven by the release of energy their action/film will produce. Something like the sperm running after the egg in the womb.

Below there is a list of 10 non-consensual and humiliating treatments on film set. Not coincidentally all the 10 filmmakers on the list are male.

…

1. Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski in Fitzcarraldo (Herzog, 1982)

Probably the most known case of yelling on set. It is all documented in My Best Fiend (Herzog, 1999). The tumultuous and yet productive relationship between Kinski and Herzog was a long-time collaboration that can be seen in films such as Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu, the Vampyre (1979) and Cobra Verde (1987). In Fitzcarraldo, though, Herzog seems to have impersonated the madness of his character, for he was very stubborn on set. Everyone associated with the film was marked, or scarred, by the experience in the jungle. Herzog didn’t want any special effects and he risked Kinski’s life in the boat sequences. Kinski was so angry that one of the native chiefs offered to kill him, but Herzog declined, saying he needed the actor to finish the film. The result is a masterpiece.

2. Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren in The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)

Blondes were Hitchcock’s favourite victims, frosty and aloof with a hidden fiery capable of winning the sympathy of the audience, according to the director, better than a brunette. The bird’s increasingly violent behaviour goes along with Melanie’s (Hedren; also pictured at the top) growing desperation. She wears the same green suit in the whole film, only to be destroyed at the final bird attack in the attic. Hitchcock’s storyboards included real birds, but of course they would not obey his exact directions of movements on set, particularly considering the fog in Bodega Bay. So he had to add some mechanical birds. On the script, Hedren understood they would be all mechanical creatures, but just before they started the scene, the assistant director said they would include real birds. Hitchcock stated: “The birds are the stars”. Hedren felt betrayed and said that everyone lied to her. The outcome is surely an unforgettable piece of art. Years later, Spielberg made Jaws, another film in which animals attack humans. Can you imagine if Spielberg used real sharks?

3. Adrian Lyne and Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks (Lyne, 1986)

Lyne isolated Basinger from the rest of the crew, spreading rumours and lies in order to create an atmosphere of mental breakdown for her. On the set, Lyne spoke only to Mickey Rourke, who was trained to ignore the actress and also to provoke her. The film pushed Kim Basinger to the edge, but it also helped to define her career. Miss Basinger said afterwards that it was a traumatic experience that even created some problems for a while in her marriage to Ron Britton.

4. Ken Loach and the boys in Kes (Loach, 1969)

In Versus, The Life and Films of Ken Loach (Louise Osmond, 2016) Loach confesses he caned for real the boys’ hands without their prior knowledge and consent in a school scene. The sweet and gentle British filmmaker decided for the use of real violence in order to achieve realism. David Bradley, who played Billy Casper, declares: “I just couldn’t believe these nice people [actors] could be so cruel” . He speaks with great affection about the film and Loach, but he can’t watch the last 20 minutes whenever there is a public screening he attends. It is just too real for him.

5. Stanley Kubrick and Shelley Duvall in The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)

Kubrick’s perfectionism affected his actors to a high degree. Shelley Duvall described working for Kubrick as “almost unbearable”. While filming The Shining, Kubrick pushed the actress to her limits and required an absurd amount of takes for every shot. For example, the scene where Wendy runs up the staircase carrying a knife was shot 35 times. During rehearsals, she had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week. Duvall was under so much stress while filming that she eventually became ill and started to lose her hair. Currently, Kubrick’s daughter is raising funds to aid ill actress Shelley Duvall. There is a GoFundMe page for Duvall.

6. Lars von Trier and Björk in Dancer in the Dark (Von Trier, 2000)

Dancer in the Dark is not like any other movie. Some people love it; others despise it. It is a musical but at the same time it is a silent melodrama. A new territory for the almost-always-happy-end-musicals. Björk wrote that she was extremely upset by the way Von Trier treats women with whom he is working and decided at that time she wouldn’t ever make another movie – she made up her mind later, appearing in many videos with her former husband Matthew Barney. For the filmmaker there is a need for secrecy in art: “It’s about making yourself more mystical, and more fantastic, and making other people the opposite.”

7. Roman Polanski and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)

According to Peter Biskind in “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”, “Polanski once forcibly plucked a stray hair from Dunaway’s head, because he thought it was catching the light and spoiling his shot. He also claims that Dunaway later took her revenge by throwing a cup of urine in the director’s face after she was refused a bathroom break.” Polanski was in a dark stage of his life – it was his first time in L.A since the murder of his wife Sharon Tate four years earlier – and during the pre-production he argued with the scriptwriter Robert Towne every day. The feature is considered a masterpiece of neo-noir.

8. David Fincher and Jake Gyllenhaal in Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)

Likewise Kubrick, Fincher is another perfectionist who has driven crew members and actors to the brink of despair. During the filming of Zodiac, many scenes required in excess of 70 takes. This caused particular stress for Jake Gyllenhaal. In response to his protests, Fincher took advantage of filming on digital by purposefully deleting hours of takes in front of the actor to show him who was in charge. Fincher later conceded that he might have been a little tough on his sensitive star, and Gyllenhaal declared: “I wish I could’ve had the maturity to be like: ‘I know what he wants. He wants the best out of me’. ” Was it worthy? The audience score at Rotten Tomatoes is 77% liked it.

9. Abdellatif Kechiche and Léa Seydoux in Blue is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)

The film pushed the boundaries of what is allowed in mainstream cinema by drawing a subtle line between porn and sexyness. At Cannes, after they won the Palm d’Or, Seydoux stated: “You can’t judge sex between two people when it’s so organic. There are so many different ways to have sex, so I think it’s not really fair [because what] is disturbing and disgusting is also exciting. The movie’s so rich, why people focus on the sex I don’t understand.” It was not easy, though, to achieve that outcome. Talking about filming the sex scenes, the longest of which was filmed over 10 gruelling days, Seydoux said: “It was sometimes embarrassing and sometimes illuminating, surrounded by three cameras in a very small room. Sometimes you could spend like five hours on a scene. I felt like a prostitute”.

10. Wes Anderson and Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)

For the last name on the list, we decided to turn things around. Here the hunter gets captured by the game!

There is a curious case, in which an actor scared the filmmaker and other members of the cast, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Anjelica Huston. The part of Royal Tenenbaum was specifically written for Hackman, something that the actor vehemently opposes. The feature was a small budget film, so Hackman was paid significantly less than usual. On set, Hackman once called Anderson a “cunt” and told the director to “pull up his pants and act like a man.” Anderson said that all of the cast members helped to protect him from the difficult actor. Hackman was a huge force and according to the director, “He was one of the things that pulled everybody into the movie”.

Half-eaten take-aways, dirty vegetables, mouldy cakes, rotting meat – just keep it coming, rats absolutely love them. These fascinating rodents are everywhere, and they will devour virtually anything we throw away. They thrive on our left-overs and excesses and, unlike us, they are not very fussy. They like it very dirty. This movie is based on the eponymous book by Robert Sullivan.

Rats explores the lives of the animals in various parts of the world, uncluding the US, the UK, India and Cambodia. You will see close-ups of the animal, their litter and their extended family in very peculiar places. Just do not expect a David Attenborough-style nature documentary, for you to wow and marvel. These creatures are threatening and disgusting, and the film is instead marketed as a “horror documentary”. We are hardwired to find them repulsive, and that this is for our own security.

“Horror films are much more about what you don’t see,” he explained in an interview with No Film School. “They’re infinitely more about the tension and the drama. What you can build up, making you scared of what might happen versus what’s actually going to happen. I think there’s a lot of moments in the movie where there is nothing happening but there is real tension because you’re just waiting, whether it be for a rat to jump out or the night rat killers to find their prey. It’s great.”

Ed Sheeran has been a rat exterminator for nearly five decades in New York, and he narrates a big chunk of the movie. He justifies his work choice: “Nobody wants to do it, so I’ll do it. I get good money”. He also explains that his relationship to the tiny and yet very intelligent mammals is seemingly based on some sort of negotiation: “I Respect them. If they jump out, I jump back”.

Don’t watch this film if you are queasy, or if you are thinking of eating… ever again. You will see rats in sewers, in ventilation systems, rats being skinned, dissected, and even parasites of all sorts (flatworms, tenias and very strange and large bugs lodged under their skin) being removed from their dead bodies. There are also plenty of images of disease developed in humans bitten by rats, or leptospirosis (transmitted through rat urine, which is pretty much, well… everywhere!).

Rats are in hospitals, nursery homes, expensive restaurants and graveyards. They are in your garbage, in your shoes and inside your cupboards, on your plates and tupperware. They are indeed everywhere. These menacing creatures can kill, and they don’t discriminate. They will come for you whether you are rich, poor, young, old, Black, white, Jew, Arab gay, straight, royal or pleb.

But there’s another side to these vile creatures. They can also be our prey, and end up on our plate, spiced with lemongrass and chilli, and served with onion and lettuce. There are many ways to prepare rat, and they taste “a little like chicken, just a little sweeter”, explains a chef in Cambodia. You might even feel some empathy for the rodents as they squeak in desperation running away from a pack of angry terriers (specialist rat hunters, we are told).

The most touching and unexpected moment comes at the end of the movie, when the director Morgan Spurlock takes us to the Karni Mata Temple in Rajasthan, India. More than 35,000 rats live there in peace with the locals, who perceive them as the reincarnation of their family, and therefore their relatives by extension. The people feed and share time with the affectionate animals. They even share a bowl of milk. It seems like we are not hardwired to find these surprising creatures disgusting after all. Repulsion is also a learnt reaction and behaviour.

Rats relies on effective imagery and interesting anecdotes about these animals, but it lacks some facts and figures. We are told that the animals originated in Mongolia, but we don’t learn much about their numbers worldwide, about their life cycle (how long does a rat live), how large their communities are and so on. Plus the constantly thumping thriller music can be a little irritating. Still this is a very insightful and unusual documentary about an animal that’s probably no more than a few metres away from you right now. It’s time to learn more about close furry friends!

The “horror documentary” Rats is out in cinemas this week at Picturehouse cinemas – just clirck here for the listings.

Watch the nail-chewing film trailer below:

“Every dog has its day.” Well, not in this isolated Kazakh tribe, situated in Northwest Mongolia. If you happen to reach that mountain, you will realise that “Every eagle has its day”, for fierce eagles are the wings of this Kazakh people. They are a semi-nomadic minority that have roamed the mountains and valleys of western Mongolia with their herds since the 19th century. They rely on their clan and herds, believing in pre-Islamic cults of the sky, their ancestors, fire and the supernatural forces of good and evil spirits. For them, gender roles are set in stone. Women milk cows, cook and clean, while men practice falconry. But a 13-year-old girl wants to break the rules. Aisholpan is determined to compete in the all-male Golden Eagle Festival as the first eagle huntress.

The Eagle Huntress is an extraordinary story of gender challenges and stratification, with a happy ending. Much has been said and published about women’s rights movements, including changes in legislation and court cases pushed by women’s organisations. Now we see women in literally thousands of occupations which would have been almost unthinkable just one generation ago: they are dentists, bus drivers, vets, airline pilots, just to name a few. Usually, though, those movements were held in countries in which education leads to an acquisition of a profession, which was previously a man’s world. This documentary explores uncharted territory: Aisholpan subverts the role of young women in a Mongolian tribe.

The photography is stunning. The director explains: “I wanted to document the ‘Future Generation’ – young kids who take their first steps in learning the hunting skills, kids who hold the tradition’s future in their bare hands.” When he finally found Aisholpan, he noticed she was perfect. “She was fearlessly carrying the eagle on her hand and caressing it somewhat joyfully.”

Otto Bell shot the film over a 12-month period, enabling him to portray every single step of the training, as well as the habits of a nomadic civilisation. Horses take part in the training too. The Kazakh people love their horses, they use them both for agriculture and leisure. Aisholpan and her dad climb a mountain and ride together while training. They live in ‘yurts’ (round tents), which they can carry easily from one place to the next.

As a daughter of an experienced eagle hunter, Aisholpan learnt the art of hunting from her father. Parents play a decisive role in shaping up the personality of heroes and heroines. Aisholpan’s family supports her all the way to victory. They had to cope with other tribe leaders and eagle hunters who constantly slammed her off. Aisholpan’s father could have rejected his own daughter and simply blamed his wife for only giving him daughters. In that case, Aisholpan could become a Mongolian Sylvia Plath, and repeat the poet’s words: “Being born a woman is my awful tragedy“. Instead, she proudly combs her gorgeous hair, dons a fancy hat and polishes her nails. She is ready for the big day of the Golden Eagle Festival.

The Eagle Huntress is in cinemas from Friday 16th December.

Watch the film trailer right here: