I'm almost caught up on festival coverage--only Days Seven and Eight to go--but before I do that, I'd like to highlight yet another film I saw in advance of the festival that has its premiere tonight. What makes this one different from the pack? It's free to attend.Rest assured: that The World We Want is showing for free is not a reflection of its quality. This is a cleverly-structured and eye-opening (if not enlightening) documentary on the various problems the world faces, always involving and never preachy.
The movie works well because it's told from the perspective of teenagers trying to tackle world-problems through a universal school project. In the project, 14-to-16-year-old students work to enact solutions for problems plaguing their local communities. Director Patrick Davidson and crew follow the finalists of the project, who will share their work in Washington D.C. and be judged for a winning-prize. Some particularly memorable examples include Americans who try to rid school lunches of saturated fats, Russians who talk to government officials to ban casinos in Samara, Indians who work to preserve and light tourist-attraction landmarks near their school, and Indonesians who protest the harsh taxation of local silversmiths.
From the teenager's point of view, all of these issues are boiled down to the essentials and, as a result, earn the viewer's sympathies easily. And to see young people attempting to enact reform on, say, mob-controlled casinos or taxation of silversmiths, is something remarkable. The audience learns about some little-known local problems and becomes involved in the cast of characters working to solve them in the process.
The picture also functions as a nice travelogue, with the filmmakers not only visiting finalists in the aforementioned countries, but also those in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Jordan, and Senegal. The photography is surpisingly aesthetically-pleasing given that the movie was shot on an HD-camera for what was presumably a shoestring budget. And it's all well-assmbled by director Davidson, who brings both heart and awareness to the issues. 3 Buckets out of 4; screens tonight, Sat., Nov. 8 at the Mann Chinese 6 at 7 p.m.
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