Kim Longinotto: Rough Aunties
Kim Longinotto is an amazingly productive film director, who has a slate of important films in her filmography (among them masterpieces like ”Divorce Iranian Style”, ”Runaway”, ”Gaea Girls”, ”Sisters in Law”), and she is a director that with her subjects and cinematographic skills reach both a broad audience and the film buffs. A retrospective of her work runs right now at MOMA in New York, and she is a hunted teacher for whatever film school or festival masterclass all over the world. She has never put herself in the first place, it is the people who matter for her, the stories around women in need, women towards whom she is capable of building trust when she appears with the camera, whe operates herself.
No wonder that the work of Longinotto has been awarded and that festivals queue to secure that they get her films as the first ones! As was the case for ”Rough Aunties” that were at idfa in Amsterdam and at Sundance Festival, and is now touring all over. It is about the association Bobbi Bear in Durban, South Africa, and the wonderful white and black women who work there with sexually abused children, making a beautiful effort to get the victims back to a decent life – and trying to get the abusers to court and sentenced.
One heartbreaking scene follows the other. Scenes with poor children with fear in their eyes hugging their teddy bears that are used as a communication tool to make the children explain where and how the assault took place. Scenes turn into sequences, stories are being built and you can only admire these women, who with their strength and commitment and love, as it is being said, ”fight the culture of silence” around brutal violence and rape.
UK, 2008, 103 mins.
