Daniel Theophanous continues his coverage of the Sheffield Doc Festival.
Read the previous day of coverage here.
Day 4 of the Sheffield Doc Fest started off with the documentary Tony Robbins: I am Not Guru, which at first appears as a promotional video for Tony Robbins, a successful motivational speaker and author, specifically around the programme he teaches: ‘Date With Destiny’. The programme takes place over six days in a swanky Florida resort, where participants pay around £5000 each to attend and by doing so, hope to heal and improve their lives.
Robbins is definitely a pop psychologist with a Jesus complex; its hard not to be cynical as the whole event is planned to the smallest detail. Yet, despite all this, Robbins still manages to charm. He is likable, and you can see that he genuinely cares and has this ability to reach right the core of people’s issues. Furthermore, what is interesting is the way the documentary is filmed, director Joe Berlinger managing to cleverly maintain a level of objectivity; the documentary is factual in its fly-on-the-wall reporting of the in-front and behind-the-scenes of the programme and leaves audiences to make their own mind up about Robbins, but also about the people attending these gatherings.
The day followed with Dogwoof documentary The Confession, an in-depth look at the story of Moazzam Begg, a devout Muslim whose interest in the Jihad led him to support the Bosnian Mujahideen and then the rebel training camps in Syria. Falling into the radar of the UK secret service, Begg was wrongfully imprisoned in Bagram, then Guantanamo and then Belmarsh prison, when he finally returned to the UK. The documentary follows Begg’s experience in a generation of conflict, bringing to surface the tensions and misconceptions of modern-day Islam and its affiliations with terrorism. Director Ashish Ghaddiali creates a gripping documentary with Moazzam as the lead, telling the story from his point of view mixed in with archive footage. Ashish does drop hints that despite Moazzam innocence, there are still question marks with his involvement with Al Qaeda.
Next up was the charming and sweet film Sonita, a portrayal of a poor Afghan refugee teenager who is also a talented rapper. The documentary follows Sonita, who now resides in Iran, and her quest to cut a rap record. Her dreams are abruptly shattered as her mum turns up, forcing her to marry for money. A twist emerges as the documentary’s director, Rokhsareh Maghami, is forced to meddle in Sonita’s real life to help, either by offering money to her mum to stall her marrying off or secretly applying for Sonita to get a scholarship to study music in the US. The outcome is very touching and refreshingly positive, whilst at the same time the film conveys the sad truth about young Afghan girls, who, not even women yet, are forced to relinquish their own personal happiness and aspirations to meet unfair societal expectations.
The day was rounded off, unsurprisingly, with yet another faultless documentary, Jim: The James Foley Story. This HBO produced film is about the widely-documented story of war journalist James Foley who was arrested in Syria by ISIS, held prisoner and then beheaded in response to American air strikes in Iraq. The documentary gives a haunting account from interviews with family members, friends, colleagues and also fellow prisoners, giving us a complete picture of the horror of what happened to Jim. The film does not show the much-publicized beheading, however the interviews of fellow prisoners describing their treatment and the long period in captivity which they endured were particularly harrowing.
Read the next day of coverage here.
