Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #215: Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) (2019).

 

It's well-known that women's and girls' rights are horribly suppressed in the Middle East. They can't even publicly show their faces or go outside alone, for the most part. They are also brutally excluded from participating in sport, but that has changed (however incrementally) since 2007, when a nonprofit organisation named Skateistan was founded in Afghanistan as a skateboarding school for women and particularly girls. Carol Dysinger's 2019 documentary Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) explores Skateistan's history and impact.

Now, I do not mean to trivialise or ignore the reality of Middle East gender equality and violence at all but I must say, I don't understand how this won the 2019 Best Documentary, Short Subject Oscar. It's clearly sympathetic and well-intentioned, but I simply didn't feel it provided any new information, you know? Furthermore, Dysinger's aesthetic approach for me felt far too polished and refined for a study of such serious and topical issues. I think Life Overtakes Me deserved the gong. 6/10.