We’re staying home to save lives, to flatten the curve and learning to live the life science fiction writers predicted when they said the climate would be too toxic for us to survive. We also live with hope because we are watching about caped crusaders on telly that are heroes.
When then American President Barack Obama walked out to the microphones for a late-night broadcast and announced that a secret operation had killed Osama Bin Laden on May 2, the news created a new kind of hero: Seal Team Six. The film 'Zero Dark Thirty' was just the beginning for our collective imaginations. It was fascinating to see how persistence pays when you’re trying to locate your enemy that’s gone into hiding.
In a scene from the movie, you will see how the figures covered in burqa reveal themselves to be armed and dangerous. There is a very long Netflix show that goes undercover to see how the people who join ISIS live. The show is called 'Gharabeeb Saud', loosely translated as Black Crows. There are 20 episodes for you to watch. Three women join the terrorist organisation for very different reasons and come to one conclusion. ISIS may promise a heaven of delights to the fighters, but their lives on Earth are hellish. I grit my teeth at the exaggerations, but horrors in the camps are so real, you cannot but be affected by it. As a woman, it shocked me to hear a woman being forcibly separated from her sons because ‘her duty of birthing is over’ and that ‘women cannot bring up sons!’
Black Crows is meant to make you aware of a world beyond sanitised movies that we watch. If the Daesh uses the media to create propaganda, then Black Crows is as scary a reply as any. When you hear tales about recruitment and see how graphic things get, you want the young lads to run away, the surgeon to escape, the women to be saved…
How do these young men and women get radicalised though? There’s a tale of Layla M, a Moroccan teenager in Amsterdam who runs away from persecution with her boyfriend and discovers that there are prejudices amid the extremists as well.
There’s a film on Amazon Prime Video though that manages to share a similar story of journalists who get Daesh riled up. That is a story of courage one should watch. It’s called 'City Of Ghosts' and it shows us how ordinary lads become heroes putting their lives in danger…
Young women running away to join the terrorists and wanting to come back are stories that make headlines. But when someone is asking for help because they’ve realised it was a mistake, what do you do? Sweden’s Caliphate is a gripping show and I had to remind myself to breathe because ever so often the fate of Pervin was on the edge of a gun…
We have heroes amongst us and I hope there are no more shows where women end up crying when things are taken from them. I stumbled upon the Vietnamese action film 'Furie' because I was looking for Liam Neeson’s 'Taken', and boy, did I suddenly become energised. Furie is about a mother whose child is kidnapped. The film starts off with great action and we are then thrown into such cool fight sequences, we have to press rewind and watch the action again. My sense of dread after watching the terrorists in Black Crows began to dissipate after watching 'Furie' on Netflix.
'Furie' reminded me of another gem many of us have missed because it’s easier to find male heroes with machine guns or certain skills that could finish off the enemies. 'Maria' is one such gem. ‘For a dead woman you look pretty good’ the villain says, and I watched the rest of the film with glee.
Osama may be dead, but terrorism is like a hundred-headed Hydra, a head appearing every time one is cut off. Paul Greengrass, the filmmaker made such a realistic film about Norway’s worst terror attack that you will be shaken at the inhumanity of it all. '22 July' captures the panic so well.
When we are raging inside about an enemy that can only be fought by staying indoors, by covering your face and by social distancing, it would do well to remind you of wars in real life and stories of great courage you will hear from all corners of the world. Stories of fights that you know are hard fought and sometimes lost. Stories of bravehearts that face death squarely in the face. For those heroes, there is this award-winning animation film that is a must-watch: 'The Breadwinner'.
Manisha Lakhe is a poet, film critic, traveller, founder of Caferati — an online writer’s forum, hosts Mumbai’s oldest open mic, and teaches advertising, films and communication.
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