29/11/2018 - World-premiering in Tallinn’s Official Selection, Partho Sen-Gupta’s movie occasionally wobbles, but the final scene alone is a powerful punch right to the solar plexus

Partho Sen-Gupta’s new film, Slam [+see also:
trailer
interview: Partho Sen-Gupta
film profile], screening as part of the Official Selection at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, is about second-generation Australians. In the movie, made four years after his previous effort, Sunrise [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and sharing its fondness for the occasional splashes of red, a tragic event rips off the masks that people have been wearing comfortably for years: namely, the disappearance of a girl. Not just any girl, though – Ameena (Danielle Horvat), a fearless activist-turned-slam poet of Palestinian origins, has been rubbing people the wrong way for a while now with her powerful performances, garnering as much appreciation as pure, unadulterated hatred, which is voiced loudly and freely thanks to the glorious invention of social media. With local authorities immediately claiming she has run away to join ISIS, it’s up to her family to pick up the missing pieces. Or, rather, her reluctant brother Tarik (Omar’s Adam Bakri).

And so he does, suddenly confronted once more with the reality he has fought so hard to leave behind, as the constant cries of angry faces on TV, in the papers or even in his own backyard bring back traumatic memories of a childhood scarred by war. But a story that seems to be structured around him soon finds a new protagonist – white police officer Joanne, herself struggling after a tragic blow. With verses of Ameena’s poetry always lingering in the air, the absent girl grabs them both by the scruff of the neck, forcing them to question things they have just learned to accept. This is why Horvat’s kohl-rimmed character, although seen mostly through other people’s eyes, still manages to capture our attention. Wearing a hijab and influenced by the likes of Malcolm X and the messages of Black Lives Matter, she is annoying and fascinating in equal measure, confused yet searching. And – yes – doubting. She does everything that other people simply refuse to do.

While the delivery is often quite wooden and some of the dialogue way too self-explanatory (“It’s all because of your fucking male ego,” yells Joanne at one point, making it almost impossible not to go full Mean Girls and add: “Duh!”), Slam is at its best when simply observing, especially as Partho Sen-Gupta, now living in Australia himself, notices things that others would rather just skim over – like the kind of racism that blends right in with everyday life, so well that you hardly notice it any more. That is, unless people are finally given an excuse to let it all out, and you wake up to find a target painted on your back. “You really think you are an Aussie?” asks an old acquaintance angrily, perfectly aware of something that Tarik, or rather Ricky, as he is now called by his white wife, is not: in this world, all it takes is one false step, and you are back to being “the other” again.

Written by Partho Sen-Gupta, Slam was co-produced by Australia and France. The film was produced by Marc Irmer, Tenille Kennedy and Michael Wrenn, of Dolce Vita Films, Invisible Republic and The Koop.