12/09/2022 - VENICE 2022: There is a lot of talking going on in this documentary, but Benedetta Argentieri still doesn’t say much

At the 79^th Venice Film Festival, where documentaries were all the rage – with one, Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, even managing to take home the Golden Lion (see the news) – it’s a bit ironic that some of the more mediocre examples also made the cut. Benedetta Argentieri’s out-of-competition title The Matchmaker [+see also:
trailer
interview: Benedetta Argentieri
film profile] is largely uninspiring and feels awfully hurried, although it’s easy to see why someone would believe in its potential: her protagonist, London-raised Tooba Gondal, is one of the most notorious British jihadists, said to have “recruited” many young women to enter into marriages with members of ISIS.

In the film, Tooba is on her best behaviour, however. She is pleasant and calm, almost disturbingly so, even when forced to listen to some of her most disturbing social-media posts – including tweets about “slaughtering infidels”. Her story is about someone who was searching for something and apparently found peace in religion, at least for a while. She found meaning in it, even though she didn’t grow up in an extremist family, and possibly also power, too.

There have been many conversations about women who suddenly upped and left their homes and friends, and decided to marry ISIS fighters. It’s something the general public can’t understand, not at all, and this doc won’t solve this riddle just yet. But there is one point that Argentieri appears to be making – it’s not just the men who are behind so many shattered lives. When talking about Nazi crimes, one Polish writer famously said: “People doomed people to this fate.” Here, women doomed women to this fate, knowing perfectly well what was in store.

As Gondal recites the list of her already deceased husbands, admitting she loved one but couldn’t really stand another, it’s chilling. And yet she reportedly encouraged others to do the exact same thing, make the exact same choices. We know that misery loves company, but this is one twisted story.

Sadly, nothing is brought to any conclusion, and it really does feel like Argentieri was robbed of an ending. The way it is now, The Matchmaker can only be fleetingly interesting as a portrait of a villain that doesn’t really appear as one, and maybe that was always Gondal’s main weapon. Or it can serve as proof that while everyone likes to paint ISIS women as clueless and passive, some ran entire networks. But the story just fizzles out, never reaching beyond this protagonist’s sweet smile. Argentieri is granted a glimpse, and then the door slams in her face.

Someone states that ISIS women “won’t change” – they are just on the run at the moment, fighting to see another day. In 2019, Gondal issued an open letter to the British public, claiming she was just a “vulnerable target”. Which also makes one wonder if by agreeing to do this doc, she might have been hoping it would actually plead her case – Argentieri apparently found her in a camp in Syria, where options were limited. It’s a murky, complicated situation, and one that could use better handling. Now, it just seems that Gondal is in a hurry to get her message across. And to obtain absolution, even though she never gets around to confessing her sins.

The Matchmaker was produced by Italy’s Fandango, which also handles its international sales.