Oscar-winning doco maker Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) has made a revealing and sweet film about Malala Yousafzai and her dad Ziauddin, which can’t help but be thirty percent or so more resonant seen in the week of the Paris attacks. Malala was shot in the face by the Taliban as Paris has metaphorically been shot in the face by ISIS, and her response is brave and moving.
We all should remember the details of Malala’s attack, so the film gives us just enough material there. It is strongly focused on Malala’s work since healing, including visiting various countries to lend her support to various causes (including the kidnapped schoolgirls incident in Chibok, Nigeria). It contrasts her sudden worldwide fame and influence with charming scenes of her domestic life in Birmingham, UK, and reminds you consistently but never heavy-handedly just how awful the Taliban is.
But where the film glows is its depiction of Malala’s relationship with her Dad, Ziauddin, himself an inspiring, influential and brave activist. “He named her Malala” after an important folk heroine, and together, they are something to behold. Guggenheim’s film is not the kind that demands a big screen, but if you do see it at the cinema you might get what I got: that rare phenomenon of spontaneous audience applause at the film’s conclusion. If that’s because we were all thinking of Paris along with Malala, all the better.
