“Daughter of Genghis” has been billed as a portrait of a nationalist gang chief at this yr’s Hot Docs Film Festival. And whereas it follows Gerel Byamba, the chief of an entirely-female, ultra-nationalist Mongolian group referred to as Gerel Khas, it’s also a surprisingly poignant documentary portrait of a widow and her orphaned son attempting to attach underneath grief. Administrators Kristoffer Juel Poulsen and Christian Als (who additionally shot the movie) comply with Byamba and her son, Temuulen, for a seven-year span, capturing how sorrow can drive somebody to excessive emotional states that manifest as each violence towards one’s neighborhood and neglect towards these closest to you.
The doc begins with an aggressive, chaotic sequence. The primary jiffy of “Daughter of Genghis” throw the viewers into the throes of Gerel Khas’ “activist” work. Byamba and her comrades are proven charging right into a sauna and harassing the intercourse employees who make a dwelling there. They’re heard over voiceover, talking of how the Chinese language are “disgusting” whereas calling the younger, susceptible ladies all types of slurs. Their mission, as Bymaba tells it, is to disgrace these intercourse employees in order that they cease promoting their our bodies to Chinese language males, as a result of the Mongolian bloodline should stay “pure.” It’s a livid justification for agitated harassment that Gerel Khas considers not solely patriotic, however important.
That murky dichotomy of 1 particular person’s freedom fighter being one other’s terrorist lies on the coronary heart of the primary a part of “Daughter of Genghis.” In any case, the invasive techniques of Gerel Khas usually are not that completely different from what numerous police forces are seen doing in lots of locations on the earth. Nevertheless, on this specific case, they carry with them the historical past of battle and neighbor-to-neighbor annexation between Mongolia and China.
Poulsen and Als repair their digital camera on Byamba and her compatriots as they speak of this historical past whereas absolving themselves of any wrongdoing. There’s additionally speak of reclaiming the swastika as a logo of freedom, citing its origins in Mongolia earlier than the Third Reich employed it. The observational model of those sequences places the viewers in an uncomfortable place, leaving them to parse Gerel Khas’ politics on their very own.
The strategy adjustments when the documentary focuses on Byamba as a person. The tone shifts from observational to confessional, with the digital camera coming nearer to the topic to intimate and revelatory outcomes. Whether or not captured instantly talking or in voiceover, Byamba cracks with susceptible emotion, leaving the decided posturing proven in her crusades behind.
As that masks is lifted, she reveals how others’ abandonment has all the time dominated her life. Her mom dying at a younger age, her father recusing himself from his caretaker duties after that and, lastly, her younger husband’s premature passing. Byamba’s father was a guard on the Chinese language border; her husband died in an accident at a mine run by the Chinese language. Byamba by no means instantly connects these private tragedies to her work with Gerel Khas. As an alternative, she bares her anxieties; the filmmakers refuse the chance to psychoanalyze her actions, letting her face inform the story.
As “Daughter of Genghis” continues, Byamba’s son, Temuulen, turns into one other focal topic. The movie is not a portrait of a nationalist agitator, however relatively a narrative of a mom and her son. In contrast to his Byamba, Temuulen, who’s six years outdated when the movie begins, is aware of precisely what he needs: his mom’s good cellphone and all of the video video games on it, plus extra time along with his mum or dad. In that order.
Regardless of all the time asking for her time, Byamba at first appears too occupied together with her work with Gerel Khas to provide her son applicable atttention. Are the sins of the fathers repeating in one other technology? The movie by no means falls into such straightforward generalizations. As an alternative, the digital camera stays a delicate observer of those two folks. Because the years go by, their relationship turns into the main target — not simply of the movie, however of Byamba herself.
“Daughter of Genghis” might start as a sensationalist story of utmost nationalism, however Poulsen and Als belief their topic to inform her personal story and increase the movie past that premise. What they find yourself with is a affected person portrait of how grief can turn out to be a violent fury, and the way different relationships can flourish in its wake. On this sense, the documentary is a rediscovery of one thing most individuals undergo, informed with empathetic specificity for this specific mom and son.
