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Stay Puft
03-10-2012, 04:21 AM
THE ISLAND PRESIDENT
Director: Jon Shenk

IMDb page (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1990352/)

http://www.impawards.com/2012/posters/island_president.jpg

Stay Puft
03-10-2012, 08:09 PM
This opens in select cities later this month but I just saw it at the closing night of the human rights festival in Toronto.

A conventional documentary perhaps but quite interesting and engaging. It is about Mohamed Nasheed and his environmental fight, focusing mostly on the Copenhagen Summit.

The documentary does two things that I like. First, although the film is about climate change, it is really about Nasheed; it creates a portrait of the man, his history, his political beliefs, his character, and then follows him everywhere, watches how he performs his job, studies his actions, and so on (Shenk said the idea was like a music documentary but with a politician for a subject instead of a rock star). This allows for some surprising insights, particularly when we get to see everything going on behind the scenes at the Copenhagen Summit and the tension it causes even within Nasheed's political cabinet. Nasheed, perhaps not surprisingly, makes for a great documentary subject.

Second, although the film is about climate change, it is really about Nasheed's fight for political freedom and human rights; it creates a narrative out of Nasheed's political activities as an activist in the Maldives, and this provides the frame for Nasheed's actions at the Copenhagen Summit. Nasheed is a man who, every single step of the way, is fighting for the Maldives and the people who live on its two thousand islands. Now, when Shenk was filming this, Nasheed was the president of the Maldives, but in the last couple months there has been more political turmoil. Nasheed was ousted from power by a military coup loyal to the former dictator (in fact, the betrayal came from within; Nasheed's vice president turned on the party and the coup saw him taking over as president). This is a terrible turn of events, but it also provides The Island President with a powerful conclusion that brings greater clarity and urgency to Nasheed's message. For Nasheed, political freedom and human rights and climate change are all parts of the same fight, and abuses of such stem from the same sources of corruption (for example, Nasheed's government was in the midst of a ten year plan to make the Maldives carbon neutral, and their progress has been thrown into disarray by the loyalists).

So, needless to say, I found this to be a stimulating experience and the Q&A with Jon Shenk afterwards was also interesting and informative. I don't think the Radiohead soundtrack worked all of the time, just sounded at odds with some scenes but that's a minor complaint; it worked well for other scenes and they (the filmmakers) picked a good track for the closing credits.