View all newsletters
Sign up to our newsletters

Support 110 years of independent journalism.

  1. Culture
  2. Film
20 October 2016updated 14 Sep 2021 2:49pm

Sonita’s parents want to sell her for $9,000 – but she has an inability to take “no“ for an answer

In Sonita, the girls chat about the opposite sex just like any other group of teenagers, except that here they are comparing the ages of their husbands-to-be. Plus: Queen of Katwe.

By Ryan Gilbey

Hip-hop is a braggart’s game that can lapse easily into an inner-city equivalent of the “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch. (“Drive-by shooting? We used to dream of being killed in a drive-by shooting . . .”) Yet even a bullet-scarred South Central homeboy has it easy compared to Sonita Alizadeh, a 16-year-old Afghan girl who raps about the injustice of arranged marriage.

Near the start of the documentary Sonita, she is pasting pictures into her scrapbook of the luxurious house where she will live once she hits the big time, and fantasising about having Rihanna and Michael Jackson as parents. For now, she is being threatened with eviction from the poky flat she shares with her sister and niece in Tehran, where they have resided as undocumented immigrants since fleeing the Taliban several years earlier. Even if she manages to stay put, her family still wants to drag her back to Afghanistan to be sold, so that the $9,000 asking price can pay for her brother’s wedding.

Sonita, who has enormous brown eyes and a touching inability to take “no” for an answer, wants to record her lyrics, but studio costs are prohibitively high and producers risk falling foul of the law if they collaborate with her. (It is illegal in Iran for a woman to perform solo in front of men to whom she is not related.) Her mother argues that it is indecent for a girl to make music, though the old woman doesn’t have such harsh words for the practice of selling off children to men. “It’s our way,” she says.

Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami’s film is peppered with these instances of unremarkable horror, in which cruelty is borne with a shrug. Sonita and her friends chat about the opposite sex just like any other group of teenagers, except that here they are comparing the ages of their husbands-to-be. One girl, with an intended who is only two years older, is the envy of her peers, some of whom are being sold to men in their thirties – though she admits casually that she had to be beaten up first before she would agree to the match. No one seems shocked.

The film is at its most complicated during the interventions made by Ghaemmaghami into the action. Off-screen voices warn her that she shouldn’t interfere but she makes no pretence of editorial impartiality. (Even the boom operator joins in an argument about whether they should pay Sonita’s mother several thousand dollars for a stay of marriage.) Ghaemmaghami could be accused of steering the action to make a stronger film but her attempt to save Sonita from being married off is far more important than that.

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU

Phiona Mutesi is another gifted youngster using her talent to escape hardship: this uneducated girl from the slums of Kampala was a chess grandmaster before she hit her teens. Queen of Katwe, a fictionalised account of her success, is produced by Disney but the story hasn’t been Disneyfied. If it goes in exactly the direction you would expect, the sights, textures and nuances along the way are anything but run-of-the-mill. Thank the director, Mira Nair, for that. Her 1988 debut, Salaam Bombay!, proved that she could coax revealing performances from non-professional actors amid a hubbub, and those skills serve her well here.

The cast includes the pensive newcomer Madina Nalwanga as Phiona, for whom chess offers strategies she can apply to her daily life. (In a moment of panic, she cries out: “Where is my safe square?”) Co-starring are David Oyelowo as her coach and Lupita Nyong’o as the mother reluctant to let her go, supported by a cast of young, yapping first-timers who deserve their own spin-off. Nair surrounds them all with bristling, lived-in detail. There is always something to tickle the eye: in a simple shot of a traffic jam, she has placed a child with his mouth squashed against a car window, while a motorcyclist weaving through the crowds bears a plume of multicoloured plastic containers, fanning out from the back of his bike like a peacock tail.

She saves the best for last: don’t miss the joyous end credits, in which fiction and documentary are united in the happiest of marriages

Content from our partners
Development finance reform: the key to climate action
Individually rare, collectively common – how do we transform the lives of people with rare diseases?
Future proofing the NHS

This article appears in the 19 Oct 2016 issue of the New Statesman, Brothers in blood

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU