Dear Future Children: Young women in Chile, Uganda and Hong Kong fight for a better tomorrow
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B
German director Franz Böhm’s documentary Dear Future Children was the winner of this year’s Hot Docs’ Audience Award (which automatically qualifies it for Oscar consideration), as well as other international prizes.
It uses a simple but effective scheme. Böhm intersects the personal and political stories of three young women activists in Chile, Uganda and Hong Kong in 2019, each with a mission to make a better future for the next generation.
Each woman narrates her own story in English, while the camera follows her in various personal and political moments. From Hong Kong, we have Pepper (a pseudonym), seen only above her COVID mask line, who joins the protests against the Beijing crackdown and legislation designed to destroy Hong Kong’s autonomy.
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In Chile, the red-haired, tattooed Rayen, joins throngs of protesters against rising prices and the growing income gap. Both women’s efforts are juxtaposed by clips of brutal police violence.
Finally, in Uganda, Hilda, an earnest university student, pushes to bring attention to climate change, which cost her family its farm. As part of her crusade, she attends a climate change conference in Copenhagen where she breaks down while telling her story to the international audience.
At a time when young women around the world, from climate change activist Greta Thunberg and March of Our Lives leader, Emma Gonzalez to Nobel winners Malala Yousafzai and Nadia Murad, are recognized as leaders of progressive change, a film such as Dear Future Children, is hardly novel.
But the success on the international festival circuit of this mostly crowd-funded documentary shows there’s an eager appetite for these kinds of inspirational documentaries. The artless approach to its material serves as a marker of its DIY authenticity. It offers few surprises, though its subjects, putting their liberty and lives on the line, demand attention and admiration all on their own.
Dear Future Children, directed by Franz Böhm, is available in select theatres on Friday, Oct. 15, including The Fox in Toronto, and on VOD on Oct. 29.