Tribeca - Fighter
Finished off Tribeca incredibly well once again. Just like last year I was somewhat skeptical of the movies I was seeing on my last day and somewhat burnt-out from having seen so many films. And just like last year, the movies I saw on the last day turned out to be amazing and were completely worth it. Fighter is a Danish movie about Aicha, a Muslim high school girl who wants nothing more than to be a martial arts fighter. Her family is very traditional and her father regards her infatuation with martial arts as unladylike and refuses to let her train with any team where boys and girls fight together. Obviously, this is unacceptable to Aicha who starts sneaking off to train with a local mixed team. The film is definitely about growing up and finding one’s identity, but it is much more about how hard it is for girls trapped in traditional families, but living in liberal countries, to try and reconcile the freedoms they see around themselves with their desires to be true to their families and their culture.
At no point in the film is a rejection of the Muslim culture something Aicha considers. Instead it is about how can she reconcile her culture with her dreams. And it is about how her parents, especially her father, cannot and will not understand that and refuse to compromise on his vision of what a Muslim daughter should be. The acting and directing are superb. The special effects and wire work in the fight scenes are as crisp and coherent as any I’ve seen in a long time (compare against the crap they had in Three Kingdoms). Five out of five.