Doc Corner: Andrea Arnold's 'Cow' and more at Hot Spring Documentary Film Festival

By Glenn Dunks

I recently ‘visited’ Arkansas of all places (virtually, of course) to sit on a jury for America’s longest-running documentary film festival. I got to judge on the 2021 Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival’s international jury with Andria Wilson Mirza and Jesse Knight and the three of us awarded the International Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize (phew!) to Andrea Arnold’s Cow with an honourable mention to Ali El Arabi’s Captains of Zataari. The U.S. Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize went to Angelo Madsen Minax's excellent North by Current, which we looked at earlier in the year.

So for this week’s column I wanted to look at a selection of the titles from songstresses in Cuba, professional wrestlers in Mexico and, yup, that damn cow.

COW

One thing that struck me immediately about Andrea Arnold’s first documentary feature is how much it felt like an Andrea Arnold movie. It is obviously a strong sign of a filmmaker’s authorial stamp that they can swing from Fish Tank, Red Road and Wuthering Heights to a barnyard documentary and remain so thoroughly true to their style. I consider her one of our most important working directors.

Unlike last year’s black-and-white Gunda, there are people in Cow, so it isn’t an entirely wordless art picture like that one. But what it holds tightly in its grip is that of the everyday mechanics of being a creature bred for human purpose. It is devoid of contrived sentimentality or intentional anthropomorphizing of its bovine subject, but is nonetheless moving as it builds to its coldly procedural ending. There are real moments of amazement within the hand-held images of Magda Kowalczyk punctuated by Arnold’s typically comic use of music.

THE RESCUE

The other most internationally recognizable title in contention was The Rescue from the Oscar-winning team of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo). Telling the story of the Thai football team cave rescue in 2018, the pair incorporate significant use of recreations that could probably quite easily pass for the real thing (likely a bigger issue for some than it was for me) along with blow-by-blow accounts by the rescuers involved. That one diver who said he'd structured his life around actively avoiding children? I liked him! Curiously, The Rescue avoids talking altogether with the boys, which is an editorial choice that could be taken one of two ways. Either it’s a lazy missed opportunity, or filmmakers choosing not to prolong the torturous pain of the most difficult time of their very young lives. I like to believe it’s the latter.

While the story is obviously a compelling one (there is a Ron Howard feature on its way, too), something doesn’t quite click dramatically. It isn’t entirely that we know the outcome, but more so that it is told as if we don’t. As if we can't. As if this wasn't worldwide news. It’s a storytelling trick that comes off as a bit cheap when ultimately the story here was good enough without the need for faux drama.

LUCHADORAS

Ciudad Juárez is a town on the Mexico/U.S. border town unfortunately best known for its murder rate than anything else. Paola Calvo’s documentary doesn’t focus on that aspect, however. Well, it’s unavoidable, really. But here Calvo (probably best known for 2016’s Violently Happy) chooses to situate it somewhat in the rearview of a much more entertaining story of the area’s booming female wrestling scene. Never too far away from the blood of Juarez's street violence, Luchadoras’ subjects tough it out for meagre dollars in the hopes they could perhaps move to America.

Like similar docs that focus on the role women play in otherwise violently masculine societies, Luchadoras finds subjects with brute internal strength. It just happens they have the ability to throw you around, too. Here, they seek to entertain, choreographing routines while dodging the real fists flung by the threatened men of the ring. The very curious mechanics of wrestling often produces interesting films that interrogate why one would inflict bodily harm on themselves for entertainment and personal gratification. Like Beyond the Mat and You Cannot Kill David Arquette, Luchadoras is both entertaining and affecting as these women strive to invert the violence of their daily lives into riotous active art.

SOY CUBANA

Similarly, Soy Cubana is about another batch of strong-willed women. Vocal Vidas is an acapella quartet of singers (Koset Muñoa Columbié, Maryoris Mena Faez, Ana Josefina Hernández, and Annia del Toro Leyva) from Cuba, who meet weekly to perform at an old military fort. While there isn’t much here to really sing about from a filmmaking point of view—no, it’s not the next Buena Vista Social Club—it is nonetheless a lovely and nicely assembled work that seeks to examine how humanity can find the best in times of turmoil.

Filmed during the time of the Trump administration, Cuba’s ever-fraught border situation plays an integral role with their reliance on tourists made perilous and the ability to tour a potential danger. An all too recurring issue as those in poverty seek to claw out of it, only to be stripped of potential progress by those who lack empathy. After some films with tough subject matter, it was a relative tonic.

And the rest…

Burning: Oscar-winning producer Eva Orner (Taxi to the Dark Side) directs this doc about the Australia ‘black summer’ of 2019–20. Compelling, but hard to find much that’s new. “Climate change scares the shit out of me” is quite the line, though.
Captains of Za’atari: Something new from the war-torn Syria, this sporting documentary is wonderfully shot and a subtle indictment of western superialism.
Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution, and Islam: Affectionately told, if not particularly revelatory doc about its titular subject’s radical life to de-radicalise the body within Islam.
The 8th: It’s The Queen of Ireland, but for the abortion rights vote and without a subject as wonderful as Panti Bliss at its core. Fairly standard stuff, but doesn’t latch on its thornier issues.
The Return: Life After Isis: Another strong entry about the emergence of woman out of violence. Officers a perspective worth engaging with.