From Now Toronto
JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES: PEACEKEEPERS
TIFF Docs D: Geeta Ghandbir, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. U.S./Pakistan. 95 min. Sep 11, 9:30 pmScotiabank 13; Sep 13, 6:15 pm Scotiabank 8; Sep 20, 12:30 pm Scotiabank 13. See listing.
In Dakha, Bangladesh, 160 female police offers – many of them Muslim – are seconded by the UN to undertake a peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
In the first section, it’s their families who feel uneasy about saying goodbye for a full year, and the difficulties escalate in Haiti. The women have been insufficiently trained and are poorly briefed. Their unease as they evict earthquake survivors from a refugee camp is palpable, and they’re startled to learn that the people blame UN personnel for a cholera epidemic.
The film works because the images of a full troupe of women in uniform are so startling and because the filmmakers home in on some startling intimate details. One soldier worries about leaving Bangladesh because her son is turning into a Muslim fanatic, and sequences where the women talk candidly about sex roles in the family are thought-provoking.
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