Dear future children
In advance of its screening at the Global Health Film Festival (25 Nov–5 Dec), Frieda Lurken reviews Hot Docs winner Dear Future Children—an intimate portrait of three young activists and the struggles they go through to fight for what is important to them.
Film review
Image credit: Dear Future Children
Year: 2021
Director: Franz Böhm
Language: English
Rating: Entertaining 4/5 | Informative 3/5 | Inspiring 5/5
Social movements are booming. The last few years have seen protests spring up around the world and leave their mark on the public consciousness—you know activism has become mainstream when Pepsi produces an advert featuring Kendall Jenner handing a can of its namesake beverage to a police officer amidst cheers of a crowd of fashionable, young protesters. Clearly activism “hits the spot”.
Given all this, a documentary like Dear Future Children feels long overdue. It tells the stories of three young women: Pepper campaigns for democracy with the Anti-Extradition Law Movement in Hong Kong; Hilda tackles the devastating impact of climate catastrophe with Fridays for Future in Uganda; and Rayen fights against inequality with Estallido Social in Chile. It goes without saying that each of these issues has dramatic implications for public health. Social movements that promote them don’t only deserve the attention of public health professionals; they should be seen as crucial parts of a country’s public health landscape.
A team of young Europeans followed the three protagonists around with the explicit intention of looking at social movements from a youth perspective. By getting to know the activists and becoming their “friends” and “comrades”, the filmmakers aimed to draw intimate portraits of the three protagonists, their motivations, thoughts, and feelings. The result has already been awarded the Audience Award of the Hot Docs Documentary Festival which automatically qualifies it for the 2022 Academy Awards.
Dear Future Children is at its best when it does what it set out to do—highlighting the struggles that young activists go through to fight for what is important to them. Turns out activism has very little to do with the Pepsi-swigging Kendall Jenners of this world. Instead, Pepper, Hilda, and Rayen—like so many activists—work extremely hard, sacrificing their education and careers, their liberty and safety. Victory often appears unattainable. Stories of imprisonment, injuries, and death combined with lengthy and gruesome scenes of police violence make for difficult viewing.
While we get to know the documentary’s protagonists over the course of the documentary, it remains hard to situate them within their movements. At times, the film risks losing sight of the broader picture because of its strong focus on the clashes between police and activists. As a campaigner, I would have loved to see the film crew use their access to core activists to illuminate some of their movements’ strategies, tactics, and methods, which are so rarely captured by the media. Recent films such as 120 BPM and Knock Down The House demonstrate that it is possible to skilfully balance the portrayal of protagonists’ personal stories with fascinating insights into their political campaigns and movements. Admittedly, both films worked with budgets that Dear Future Children, a production that was mostly crowdfunded, could only dream of. However, had their film crew embedded the three heroes more deeply within their social movements, it may also have become clearer what their unique contributions as young people were.
Nonetheless, Dear Future Children is refreshingly sober in its depiction of the stark realities facing young activists. Although it celebrates its protagonists, it doesn’t glorify or stylise them but presents them as the brave and vulnerable humans they are. If watching these three women giving everything makes even a handful of audience members ask themselves how they could give more, then the Dear Future Children team deserves plenty of credit for that.
Dear Future Children is being screened live at the Global Health Film Festival on Saturday 4 December, followed by a panel discussion including the director, Franz Böhm. Global Health Film Festival is the annual flagship event of Global Health Film, a UK charity promoting the power of storytelling in global health. More information and tickets can be found on their website.