Two small nations with big issues in TIFF spotlight

Two films about key pro-democracy ‘warriors’ of the Indian subcontinent – one a documentary, the other a biopic – are expected to arouse keen interest at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival.

Especially significant is the fact that the predicaments of the two countries featured in the films – Myanmar and the Maldives – are hardly known, let alone documented, in this part of the world.

First off the block will be The Island President, a documentary film about the Maldivian President Mohammad Nasheed’s gutsy fight to save his nation from being submerged by the sea.

Fears are being expressed that the Maldives might disappear from the face of the earth as early as by 2050.

The Island President will be premièred at the Bell Lightbox, TIFF’s principal venue, on the evening of September 10. The screening will be followed by a conversation between Nasheed and the maker of the film, Jon Shenk.

Shenk was the cinematographer of the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary Smile Pinki. In 2004, he made The Lost Boys of Sudan, a film that followed two young refugees of the Sudan civil war through their first year in the US.

Nasheed, who became the president of the Maldives at the age of 41, spearheaded a 20-year battle against dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the nation from 1978 to 2008.

During the struggle, Nasheed was jailed as many as 12 times, spent a year and a half in solitary confinement and was nearly tortured to death on two occasions.

Nasheed gave Shenk unprecedented access to make the documentary, obviously with an eye on spreading global awareness about the growing threat that his small island nation faces.

The other pro-democracy icon, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, is relatively well known here, but few in the west have a clear notion of the sort of grave dangers the incredible lady has overcome to push her country towards a democratic future.

Suu Kyi is played in Luc Besson’s The Lady by Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh. The film is a dramatised account of the 21 years that she spent under house arrest but during which she did not stop her political fight against a brutal military regime. She was set free in November last year.

French filmmaker Besson’s tribute to Suu Kyi is expected to heighten world pressure on the Burmese leadership and bring the plight of the people of that nation to wider western audience.

Following its world première here on September 12, The Lady will be the opening film of the Rome International Film Festival on October 27.