He Named Me Malala

The documentary takes Malala Yousafzai's life and the day she was attacked. In the Swat valley of Pakistan the Taliban closed the schools and forbade the education of girls. Her father ran a school there and encouraged her to speak. Malala kept a diary under another name, then spoke under her own. In 2012 she was shot on the school bus. The film also follows her life now: a house in Birmingham, school, her brothers, and a daily order caught between an ordinary adolescence and an international campaign. Davis Guggenheim directs. The documentary dates from 2015. The title carries a question: the name Malala comes from a woman known in Afghan history and her father gave it to her. The documentary asks how far that choice determined her life. The narrative gives no settled answer and leaves the relationship between father and daughter open. Its animated sections are used to describe the past and were made in a watercolour manner. Its best side is the scenes at home; her arguments with her brothers and her school marks break the official register. What was criticised is the lack of distance; the narrative nowhere looks critically at its subject and does not enter the arguments in Pakistan. Who it is for: people who watch documentary on current politics and the right to education. Who it is not for: the narrative is one sided, the structure loose, and it does not go beyond what is already known.