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He Named Me Malala
Documentary
There’s a smart structural conceit at the heart of director Davis Guggenheim’s documentary profile of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who spoke out against restrictions on girls’ education, then survived an assassination attempt to become a Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for women’s rights in the Third World. It’s just a shame that conceit doesn’t work better. Much of the film follows Malala and her family in exile in England, attempting to humanize her by showing how she’s just a normal teenager who fights with her brothers and looks at cute celebrities on the Internet. Yet there’s also a lot of time spent on context—both the world of Malala’s home in the Taliban-controlled Swat Valley, and her childhood with an education-committed father who named her after a legendary Muslim freedom-fighter. And both sections fall flat in different ways, as Guggenheim captures both the whirlwind of her present-day public life and those formative years in ways that are respectful without often being terribly illuminating. He mostly seems determined to show how nice Malala is—which feels disappointing, considering her work is all about girls refusing simply to be “nice.”
Official Site: www.foxsearchlight.com/henamedmemalala
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Producer: Walter Parkes, Laurie Macdonald, Mohamed Al Mubarak, Michael Garin, Jeff Skoll and Shannon Dill
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Producer: Walter Parkes, Laurie Macdonald, Mohamed Al Mubarak, Michael Garin, Jeff Skoll and Shannon Dill
