I chose this film at the last moment as I had time between two others I had pre-booked. I am glad I did because I learned a lot about Islam and jihad and what motivates those who choose to fight in the Middle East. The film follows the lives of a muslim family in France and in the first place one of their sons who becomes radicalized and returns to the family home in Syria as the civil war in that country started. He goes to fight against Assad and joins the rebels as opposed to ISIS and finds himself in the middle of a confusing and vicious war where the good and bad are hard to distinguish. He is soon seen as an enemy of both the Assad regime and ISIS both of whom want him dead and they ultimately get their wish. The father who supported his son’s decision realizes with his death that he must take up the struggle. He goes to Syria to follow his son and continue his son’s work. He becomes a major leader in the rebel forces but he is also haunted by the fact that his son’s body is missing and buried by his enemies in an unmarked grave. His final ambition is to find his son’s body and have it buried in the family estate which had been in the family for hundreds of years. It is a remarkable story and while many are not enthusiastic about jihadi thinking you will come a long way to understanding the thinking and context from which it arises at least in this case.

Okay – I am a bit focussed on climate change and this year’s festival gave me many opportunities to indulge my obsession. Josh Fox, the director of this film also directed one of the more recent and important climate change films Gasland. So I figured this one had to be good. It starts from him noticing that a tree he planted in his home community as a child is dying and he wants to understand why. The question sends him on a trip around the world to see how the places and things that people treasure are being lost as a direct result of climate change and its effects on their homes and countries. The stories are heart wrenching but the responses of the people affected are encouraging. It turns out that the things climate can’t change are our ability to react and fight against those that would continue the assault on our world. He documents many of these struggles from individual acts to community resistance. The film does help those of us who are really depressed about what is happening to see the possibility of change and perhaps a way toward saving what we have left. Uplifting.

Another good example of how we are challenged by climate change. In this case the film is about South Asian and Middle Eastern refugees who are fleeing to Australia to escape famine, drought and war. Unlike Canada and Europe however the Australians throw up legal and inhumane obstacles to these people. The film documents the clear efforts of a series of Australian governments to deny entry to these refugees and to try and deny that they are anything but refugees. They force them to move to horrendous concentration camps which they call detention centres on isolated islands north and east of Australia. The living conditions are intolerable and the detainees suffer from physical and mental illness brought on by and intensified by the living conditions. In true democratic spirit it is illegal to film in these camps and anyone working there who blows the whistle is subject to criminal prosecution and imprisonment. The director and film crew that put this together filmed suruptiously and interviewed social workers and others anonymously. It was a brave film to make and the participants even braver. The film is made by Australians who were present for a Q and A afterwards. They are deeply ashamed of their country and their fellow countrymen who are complicit in the actions of their government. One of the saving graces of the story was an interview with the former prime minister Malcolm Fraser from 1975-83. He was the last prime minister to look on immigration as a positive thing and who strongly condemned the policies of his successors. Unfortunately he died shortly after the film was completed but appeared to be one of the only sane voices left in the country.

A very powerful film that is not uplifting or particularly hopeful but which does may you feel better about Canada.

In 1981, during the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland a young IRA recruit, Bobby Sands, was arrested for the second time and placed in the notorious Maze Prison on an arms possession charge. While there he and the other prisoners argued that they were not criminals but rather political prisoners and should be treated differently. In previous years the British government had allowed these prisoners special status in terms of the conditions of their imprisonment but Margaret Thatcher had revoked these and put harsh conditions in place. To protest this treatment and draw attention to the IRA’s demands, Sands decided to sacrifice himself and went on a hunger strike. Ten other prisoners joined him and for 66 days he held the attention of the world as he slowly declined and ultimately died from starvation. Several more of the other hunger strikers also died until the British relented under public pressure and lifted the harsh conditions for the prisoners. His actions brought attention to the conflict generally in Northern Ireland and to the manner in which the British chose to suppress it. The film uses actors, newsreel footage and interviews with survivors and others who were present at the time as fellow members of the IRA, British police and others. It is an objective enough picture but clearly paints a positive one of Sands himself.

I confess I am of many minds about this film. While many want to point to Sands’ courage and initiative in giving up his life for his cause, it is his cause that one has to question. The Catholic population in Northern Ireland were isolated and in a minority but they were hardly in need of the kind of terrorist campaign the IRA waged. 3500 innocent people were killed by the IRA during their so-called war. They themselves suffered little as they cowardly shot unarmed women and children and planted bombs that they triggered from a safe distance. During Sands’ hunger strike some innovative IRA types thought it would be great to have him run in a by-election for a Northern Ireland seat in the British House of Commons. He won of course but on the day of the election some brave IRA gunmen knocked on the door of a house in Belfast and shot an unarmed mother dead for the crime of helping collect census forms. That I should praise Sands’ for his courage defending these terrorists is beyond me. On the other side however, his death brought attention to the fact that the British and Irish both had done nothing to resolve the conflict. Over the next nearly 2 decades slow action was taken to bring peace to the situation which meant reconciliation among the IRA and the equally abhorrent Ulster Defence League. The real courage was with the relatives and friends of the victims of the conflict who were able to forgive or forget what had taken place. Still as you can see the film makes you think and also to be fair does not shy away from labelling the crimes of the IRA. Worth a watch in this reviewer’s opinion.