HE NAMED ME MALALA
DIRECTOR: Davis Guggenheim
CAST: Malala Yousafzai, Ziauddin Yousafzai, Toor Pekai Yousafzai, Khushal Yousafzai, Atal Yousafzai
CLASSIFICATION: PG V
RUNNING TIME: 88 minutes
RATING: 3 stars (out of 5)
Theresa Smith
HE NAMED me Malala is a gentle and very respectful documentary about Malala Yousafzai (pictured), the young Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for speaking out against them. Through her story, director Davis Guggenheim highlights issues of free speech, universal education and how an inspirational teenager can change her world.
It picks up Malala’s story once she is living in Birmingham and then somewhat confusingly flits back and forth in time to paint a picture of her childhood, the events leading up to her being targed as a 15-year-old by the Taliban and her subsequent evacuation to England.
It follows her for just more than a year, starting at the point where she misses out on winning the Nobel Peace Prize and taking it up to the point where she actually wins it as as 17-year-old (along with Kailash Satyarthi) in 2014.
It concentrates greatly on her relationship with her teacher father Ziauddin Yousafzai, who named her for an Afghanistan folk hero who spoke her mind and rallied troops on a battlefield. The idea that she served as his mouthpiece is broached in passing, but never really followed up, with Ziauddin insisting Malala knew her mind from an early age.
Events preceding the family’s stay in England are shown as a mixture of pastel animated sequences of her growing up in the Swat Valley in Pakistan and historic footage of Taliban incursions. She and her friends describe how their bus was targeted by the Taliban, we see how she and her family adjust to life in England, plus how she travels with her father, campaigning for education rights.
We see her play with her brothers and engage with schoolmates in class (which she finds more difficult than back in Pakistan where she understood the culture).
The director interviews each family member about the rights activist. They speak candidly about Malala, but he struggles to get Malala herself to open up, even pointing out to her that she is very guarded, to which she smiles, agrees, but offers no rebuttal. He gently teases her about whether she would ever ask a boy out instead of waiting to be approached, to which Malala replies that this boldness is the purview of her younger brother, who displays a keen insight when he, in turn, says she has that right, but doesn’t see it for herself yet.
Through Malala’s experience, the documentary makes real a concept many Westerners can’t wrap their heads around – the idea that being a girl means you are afforded less rights than boys, so it humanises a complex idea in an identifiable way.
The film is more inspirational than edifying, with the domestic sequences of Malala just being a normal teenager more emotionally affecting than the big moments when she addresses the UN or campaigns for Nigerian schoolgirls’ rights.
While Guggenheim does include some dissenting voices to show not everyone in the Muslim world is enamoured of Malala, this documentary is for the most part about showing an ordinary girl who, spurred on by extraordinary circumstances, would not be silenced.
If you liked Afghan Star, you will like this.