For this week’s batch of Weekend Streaming Recommendations, I’ve chosen to pick a quartet of excellent documentaries, but with an added bonus: To enhance your viewing pleasure, I’ve included interviews I conducted with the films’ directors and subjects! It’s like special features for streaming movies!…well, kinda. There have been a truckload of great, great documentaries coming out over the past year or so, and these four are some of my favorites.

The Square

Recently nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary, Jehane Noujaim’s The Square is about the Egyptian mass protests staged in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that have rattled the country over the past few years, and it’s also one of the most thrilling, culturally significant, awe-inspiring films in recent memory. Streaming exclusively on Netflix, the film follows a handful of revolutionaries, all from different walks of life, as they devote their lives to wresting the power away from oppressive dictators Hosni Mubarak and his over-powered successor, Mohammad Morsi. You couldn’t ask for a more inspirational, captivating on-screen personality than the film’s primary subject, a young, brash, loudmouth revolutionary by the name of Ahmed Hassan who you’ll never forget. – Watch the trailer

Interview with director Jehane Noujaim and producer Karim Amer

Tall as the Baobab Tree

One of the best documentaries I saw at last year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, Tall as the Baobab Tree follows a family in a small Senegalese village that struggles to transition into a new age of modernity that threatens to disrupt their established, traditional roots. When a freak accident puts a young girl named Coumba’s family in a desperate financial situation, her father chooses to sell her younger sister Debo into an arranged marriage. With Coumba being the first in the family to attend school, she’s able to dream of a bigger, better future for herself, and she wants to rescue her sister from the forced fate imposed upon her by their father. Though the script is fictional, the story speaks to the real-life status of a part of the world teetering on the precipice of modernity. It’s a beautiful, important film, and a story more people should be familiar with. It isn’t streaming for free at the moment, but it’s a special film that’s worth shelling out a few bucks. – Watch the trailer

Interview with director Jeremy Teicher

Blackfish

I’m never, ever going to Sea World again, thanks to Blackfish, a bracing, revealing documentary by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. The film examines the fatal consequences of marine parks keeping animals like killer whales in captivity through the story of one whale in particular, named Tilikum, who’s taken the lives of three trainers since his capture. Cowperthwaite interviews current and previous employees of these parks, and their accounts of the tragedies surrounding Tilikum and whales like him are shocking. With so many people having misconceptions about how these sea parks operate (me included), Blackfish is a must watch, and will hopefully help to bring about change in the way we treat animals in captivity. – Watch the trailer

Interview with director Gabriela Cowperthwaite

A Band Called Death

“Before there was punk, there was a band called Death”, reads the poster for the rock-doc A Band Called Death, directed by Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett. The tagline speaks the truth: Before the Ramones or The Clash rose to prominence, three brothers from Detroit started a band in their parents’ house and eventually recorded the world’s first pure punk record. The band was forgotten and never received credit for pioneering a genre of music, but in 2008, their music resurfaced and word about the lost “forefathers of punk” began to spread like wildfire. Dannis and Bobby Hackney, two thirds of the band, recount the troubled history of their musical journey, including the demise of their self-destructive, spiritually inspired late brother, David. – Watch the trailer

Interview with subjects Dannis and Bobby Hackney

The Square captures the chaotic energy of the Egyptian mass protests of 2011 and 2013, a rush of sights and sounds shot at street level that blitzes the senses as it quickens the heart. It’s not as informative a documentary as some may expect, but it wasn’t designed that way; director Jehane Noujaim is more interested in the swelling spirit of the Egyptian people–a handful of charismatic revolutionaries in particular–than the political machinations that incited them.

Egypt has been in a state of imbalance since January 2011, when thousands gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to stage a weeks-long mass protest against dictator Hosni Mubarak. Their devotion to change paid off as Mumbarak stepped down, but their celebration was premature, as the military regime left in the dictator’s wake became violently oppressive, abusing and firing live rounds on demonstrators, killing many. High-ranking military officers (some of which Noujaim interviews in the film) smugly denied the involvement of soldiers in the killings, despite overwhelming video evidence to the contrary. Then came the election of Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi, who turned out to be even more manipulative than his predecessor, granting himself more power than most Egyptians felt comfortable with. The revolutionaries ousted him, too, and (regrettably) violently reprimanded his followers in the Brotherhood. Such a sustained demonstration of defiance had never been seen before, and though the country remains splintered, the protests indicated an impending shift in Egyptian consciousness.

Noujaim (who grew up just blocks away from Tahrir Square) and her film crew (all of whom she met in the square during the initial protest) were running in the streets with cameras for two, following the film’s characters through all of the elections, military killings, heated debates, rousing victories, and bitter defeats. It’s amazing how ubiquitous the crew’s cameras are, filming the events in the middle of the square, up on overlooking rooftops, in tight alleys, and right on the front lines of military/protester standoffs. Some shots–like footage of innocent people getting run over by a tank–are so gruesome and overwhelming you’ll quiver. Others are gorgeous and moving, like aerial shots of the Cairo streets impossibly flooded by millions of demonstrators. Every moment feels vital. The Arab Spring will be written about and discussed for decades to come, but nothing will ever convey how the revolution felt better than The Square does.

Noujaim’s depiction of the revolution is as intimate as it is spectacular, focusing on viewing the events through the eyes of select individuals, all of whom come from different backgrounds and offer unique perspectives. The Kite Runner actor Khalid Abdalla returned to Cairo from England for the 2011 protests and became an invaluable asset to the movement due to his eloquent way with words and his link to Western media outlets. Magdy Ashour, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, finds himself torn between two factions as he stands with the demonstrators in the square while he’s ridiculed for his Brotherhood affiliation.

The beating heart of the film is Ahmed Hassan, a young, charismatic, cocky loudmouth who epitomizes everything the revolution stands for. He’s constantly engaging in intense public debates with anyone who’ll listen, attracting large crowds with his booming voice and fiery eyes. He’s an incredible talker, and rivals the wonderful Man on Wire‘s Philippe Petit in his magnetism and charm.

Of the many conversations and debates seen throughout the film, Ashour’s are the most fascinating, as he’s constantly accosted by friends, family, and strangers alike about his allegiances. His mother disapproves of his participation in the revolution, saying that her son is out on the streets, “playing revolutionary”, while the Brotherhood (who have supported him financially for years) suffer beatings at the hands of the same demonstrators he stands with in the square.

Late in the film, Hassan says that he believes the greatest victory of the revolution is that children have now taken to playing a game where they pretend to be revolutionaries, acting out faux demonstrations where they demand more ice cream, for example. Hassan’s sentiment is an interesting juxtaposition to Ashour’s mother’s “playing revolutionary” slight, serving as an illustration of where the Egyptian consciousness used to be, and where it’s headed.

Noujaim is clearly on the side of the secularists, capturing little to nothing of the Muslim Brotherhood perspective, the same people who are dying in the streets for their beliefs. She very much portrays government officials, the military, and the Brotherhood as “others”, making the film a clouded and partial historical document at best. But this hardly matters; the film doesn’t operate as an educational guide to the revolution, existing more as a snapshot of the emergence of a new Egyptian identity.

The Square is an engrossing, transportive experience, but more importantly, it’s a galvanizing one. The film’s greatest victory isn’t simply that it makes you feel like you’re in Tahrir Square; it’s that it makes you want to be there.

Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim’s rousing documentary The Square was born of a revolution.

In January 2011, Noujaim traveled to Cairo when she heard rumblings of an uprising forming at Tahrir Square in opposition of longtime President Hosni Mubarak and his military’s abusive oppression. She arrived at the titular square engulfed by an endless sea of protesters and, with no previous plans to make a film, broke out her camera and started shooting.

There, in the square, she met Karim Amer (who would become her producer), the rest of her crew, and three men who would become her cast of characters; Ahmed Hassan, an limitlessly spirited and vocal revolutionary; Magdy Ashour, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood; and British-Egyptian actor/activist Khalid Abdalla, who had also flown to Cairo when he heard the news.

As the revolutionaries stood their ground for days on end, unwilling to relinquish the small piece of the city they had reclaimed from the political leaders they resented, tensions between them and the military personnel grew increasingly combustable, the stakes began to rise to dangerous levels, and Jehane began to find her story. It’s a story of a new Egypt, written by young people starving for change.

The Square follows the lives of these revolutionaries as they fight to oust Mubarak and his regime, and fight even harder against his replacement, Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Morsi, who turned out to be just as corrupt as his predecessor. With jaw-dropping street-level footage, Noujaim captures the energy of the young people driving one of the most significant revolutions in human history.

Noujaim and Amer sat with us in San Francisco to talk about what led to the revolution, the importance of art in this new movement, Egypt’s generational gap, their inspirational cast of characters, and more.

On Friday, January 17th, The Square will be available on Netflix as well as screen in select cities. For more info, visit www.thesquarefilm.com.

A woman in the film says something to the effect of, “Egyptians don’t protest easily.” How extreme was the political and social unrest for Egyptians to flock to the square in such numbers?
Jehane: That was Bosayna Kamel. I made a film about her in 2007. She was a newscaster and she quit, because she said she was no longer going to tell lies. She started an organization called “Egypt We’re Watching You” with two other women. She was the first person I called when I heard rumblings going on. It’s funny you pick her, because she ended up running for president throughout this whole process.

Karim: The first woman to run for president.

Wow. You didn’t feel the need to explore her story more?
Jehane: We decided that she was her own story and didn’t want to go into it in the film. We wanted to keep the film about the square.

Karim: To your question, I think the country had reached a breaking point in terms of piled up frustration and oppression. I think that what sparks these incredible movements that are leaderless is a kind of social phenomena. I don’t think it’s one particular incident that sparked the whole thing. There was a series of police brutality that happened, and one particular case was Kahled Saeed.

Jehane: He was arrested, tortured, and killed. Brutally, brutally tortured.

Karim: The initial protest on January 25th was just a protest against police day. Nobody anticipated that it would be that substantial. The biggest impact wasn’t that people came down on January 25th; people had done that before, many times. Why this situation was different is because people came back the next day. And the next day. And the next day. That’s what made this different than other protests in the past. People were determined to continue, and when they did, the impossible happened. The barrier of fear that people had been living in for years crumbled. It was really magical.

Here’s a people who had lived in a country where no political discourse was happening, where you’re scared you might disappear or get arrested. People from all walks of life came down in the millions, and it was a real paradigm shift for people power and world history.

What Bosayna says in the film is that, yeah, it takes a lot. The cost has been high, but people aren’t going to give up.

Jehane: She also has the right to say that, because she’s been fighting in the streets for so long, trying to get people to understand what their rights are. She’s experienced that people have put up with so much for such a long time. Their rights have been trampled on. Egyptians have managed to live through these difficult periods with a sense of humor that is often difficult to understand, given the dire circumstances.

Karim, is it correct that you met Jehane in the square while you were setting up a stage for people to read poetry?
Karim: Yeah. There was a brotherhood stage and a left wing stage. My cousin and I had set up a stage that was an open mic for people to say whatever they wanted. The only people speaking on the other two stages were leaders, known people. The fact that people could say whatever they wanted–people had never seen that before. It was exhilarating.

So, you have this stage for people to read poetry and speak freely, and now you have this wonderful film that is going to influence a lot of people. Talk about the importance of creative work in this movement, how it can uplift, encourage, and educate people.
Jehane: It’s incredibly important. If you looked around at the people who really stuck it out at the square, a large number of people from the creative industry were there. There were times when things emptied out, and it was always the creatives that were leading change. You could see this demand for change, for people to pay attention and not turn a blind eye anymore, through the uploading of videos, through paintings on the wall, through stencils of the people who were killed spray painted on the walls of downtown Cairo so that the army couldn’t forget what they had done. Graffiti exploded. The only serious political conversation that’s been able to exist has been through cartoons and satire. It’s the cartoonists and satirists that have been able to get away with pushing the boundaries.

Karim: At the heart of this movement is culture and freedom of expression. What’s galvanizing Egyptians are young people who choose to break the narrative and write a new one. That’s part of a global paradigm shift. There are a lot of young people around the world who are now starting to say, “We deserve better.” The successes and failures of these movements around the world are all connected in determining whether we get to that better space that we all know is possible. That’s what we end the film on, this idea of a global conscience, which is what we’re really fighting for in Egypt and what people have been fighting for with all of these social movements around the world. The fight against apartheid, the fight for civil rights in this movement, Irish independence, the occupy movement; all of these movements are interconnected. The best part about releasing the film here and in other places is seeing how people relate to the film who have nothing to do with Egypt.

Has the film screened in Egypt?
Jehane: We haven’t been able to show the film there yet. I had a conversation with Ahmed and Magdy the other day, and I felt so bad because they’re not able to experience the incredible reactions from people. Although, they were incredibly motivated and touched by the audience awards at Sundance and TIFF, which are the only awards that mean anything. (laughs)

One of the many themes in the film is the generational dynamic in Egypt. There’s a big gap there. In one scene, Magdy’s mother is upset with him, saying that he’s running around and “playing” revolutionary. Not much later in the film, Ahmed says that the greatest victory of the revolution is that children have begun playing a game where they “play” revolutionary.
Jehane: What Magdy’s mother said was very much a comment on what the Brotherhood is doing for a lot of these people who are unable to support their families. Magdy has been supported by the Brotherhood for 25 years. It’s interesting that you saw that. For many of the people who fought in the revolution, one of the big victories for people who fought in this revolution is that there’s been a cultural change, a change in consciousness similar to what happened here in the civil rights movement. There may not be all the tangible results that we demanded taking place, and we’re still fighting for some of the demands of the civil rights movement to be turned into laws, but there’s a kind of consciousness that’s changed where we’ll never accept some of the things that we accepted before people stood up and said no more. That’s what’s beginning to happen in Egypt, and it’s crucially important.

You can’t really ask for a better film subject than Ahmed. What’s amazing to me is that you found him and the rest of the crew in the square, all at once. How did that all come together?
Jehane: We all met because we were sleeping near each other in tents. The revolution was very much about using whatever skill you had to help move it forward. So, if you were an electrician, you’re figuring out how to hook up the street lamps so people can charge their cell phones in the square. If you had access to a restaurant, you were bringing food to the square. It was incredible. As a filmmaker, I could film, I could tell stories through images, and I could be a witness. It became a movie later.

I met Karim, who was in the process of redoing the largest hospital in Egypt. If you can redesign a hospital, you can figure out how to produce a film. I met [Muhammad] Hamdy, who is a very talented director of photography, and he helped us figure out the cameras. It was the first time I’d ever used a 5D. Cressida [Trew] came on as one of the filmmakers and decided she was going to film Khaled and some other people. I don’t know whether Khaled knew at the time that that would mean he would be waking up to a camera every day (laughs), but we got very intimate moments with him because of that.

All of the characters we met in the first 18 days. You choose characters by [asking yourself], “Is this somebody that I want to spend the next couple years following?” You have to feel quite passionate about the people that you’re following and that they have important voices to be shared with the world. I felt that about each one. Khaled is incredibly articulate during very confusing times. Magdy is one of the most open-minded people I’ve ever met. Having been raised and deeply committed to the Brotherhood, he was incredibly open to other people’s points of view.

I fell in love with Ahmed when I met him, and everybody does. His joy just emanates from him. His passion, his belief, his principles. That’s something all of the characters share; a steadfast dedication to their principals, no matter what. Ahmed was inspiring. He was somebody who would literally start a discussion in the square and in five minutes be surrounded by 50 people. By following him, I knew that I was always going to be at the center of the action.

There’s a breathtaking shot where the person holding the camera runs after Ahmed as he charges to the front line of a barricade.
Karim: That was the DP, Hamdy. He’s an incredible cinematographer. When you witness the electricity of people claiming their rights and coming together, it just changes you fundamentally. When you witness people being attacked and the state being abusive, it rallies a nerve in you, and you feel like this story needs to be told. Our team that came together all felt that way, that the narrative we started writing as young Egyptians needed to stay in our control. We couldn’t allow state or international media to rewrite the narrative or end it where they wanted. That’s what drove people to put their lives at stake. What you’re capturing is history. What you’re capturing is evidence. What you’re capturing is a society’s unraveling and the founding of a new nation. You don’t care about your life when you’re in that position. You’re witnessing such acts of bravery that you think, “If they’re doing it, what am I doing?”

That’s what’s been great about the film. We show the film to a lot of high school students, and one girl said, “I don’t feel comfortable calling myself an environmentalist anymore, because what am I actually doing for the environment besides posting things on facebook? Am I really willing to take a stand?” That’s been important in the release of this film, to show the importance of the street, how hard it is to affect change, and yet how we all have a stake in world change.

Is it gratifying to be able to show the film to people across the world and see them relate to what’s going on in Egypt?
Jehane: It is. It’s been incredible showing it to high schools and colleges. The youth of this country really get it at a core level. They’ve come up to us and said, “These people feel so alive. I want to feel alive like that.” The film is about fighting for change. It’s a process, and it takes commitment. I’ll never forget when the military put out a law that said protests were banned, and Ragia (a character in the film) was being interviewed by CNN. She said, “We have to protest against this law.” The reporter was like, “But…protests are banned…” and she said, “Yes. We have to protest it.”

This past Thursday in San Francisco, the San Francisco Film Society held their inaugural Fall Celebration, honoring four films that look to be contenders come Oscar season: Nebraska, Fruitvale Station, Her, and The Square. Patrons gathered at elite social club The Battery to celebrate cinema and raise money for the Society.

Filmmakers and actors from the films were in attendance to participate in a panel before the night’s festivities, including directors Alexander Payne, Ryan Coogler, Spike Jonze, and Jehane Noujaim, and actors Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) and June Squib (Nebraska). The questions tossed at the star-studded panel covered a wide range of topics, from origin stories to locations to budgets to filmmaking processes.

Hometown Hero

Bay Area native Ryan Coogler was visibly proud and humbled to be in San Francisco representing Fruitvale Station, his debut feature which reconstructs 22-year-old Oscar Grant’s last day on earth, before he was shot and killed by a transit officer in a BART station in Oakland. Coogler remembered being deeply affected by the news of Grant’s death, but felt the media lost the human angle of the incident. “Nobody was really talking about the fact that Oscar was a human being,” he recalled. “He wasn’t just a symbol…he was a 22-year-old guy who had hopes and dreams and relationships, and it all got cut short.”

The movie was filmed mere miles from where the panel was taking place, which Jordan (who plays Oscar) emphasized was key. “It was very important–especially to Ryan,” he said. “[Ryan] just didn’t see the film being shot anywhere besides here, where it happened, where Oscar was from.” Coogler got the green light to shoot in the Bay Area with some help from an influential supporter. “It’s always easier when you have somebody like Forrest Whitaker writing a letter or making a phone call,” Jordan said about the film’s famous producer and mentor to Coogler.

When asked about the state and future of the film industry, Coogler seemed to have an optimistic outlook. “The studio films that we’ve seen succeed this year…some have been about comic book characters from pre-existing franchises that studios could put money behind. But, we’ve had others that have been incredibly human. The more we see projects that can make a lot of money and also have human connections…we’ll see studios doing more of those.”

Big Studios and Indies Get Along…in Nebraska

Alexander Payne’s Nebraska–a road trip movie about a father (Bruce Dern) who takes his son (Will Forte) with him on a pilgrimage from Montana to Nebraska to collect prize money he’s won from a lottery–is a studio film shot in gorgeous black and white, with no major stars in its cast, one of those “human” films Coogler was gushing about.

Payne, whose first film, Citizen Ruth was shot over 40 days, was blown away when he asked Coogler how long it took to shoot Fruitvale (20 days.) “It takes me 20 days just to walk to the bathroom!” he joked.

When asked if anyone at Paramount, the film’s distributor, questioned the bankability of the project, Payne assured us that there weren’t any studio heads poking around the production. “To Paramount’s credit, no one [questioned that.] They gave me carte blanche. Once we agreed [on the] 13 and a half million base budget, they left me totally alone.”

Something in the Way She Moves…

Her, Spike Jonze’s latest window into his brilliant, hyperactive imagination, follows a sad-sack writer named Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) as he begins to fall for an operating system named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), something like a super-advanced version of “Siri” tailored to be Theodore’s perfect companion. Despite a premise absolutely dripping with social satire, Jonze insists no grand statements exists at the core of Her. “I wasn’t trying to make a comment or a satire about society,” Jonze explained. “…the character of the operating system is just a voice, but we tried to create a character that is a fully developed being with their own longings, needs, and passion.”

“One of the things that was important to us when we were designing the movie was to design this very warm world…a heightened version of the world we’re in,” Jonze said of the significance of place in cinema. He further elaborated on geography’s emotional significance: “L.A. is this place where the weather’s always nice, the ocean is there, the mountains are there…but even in that light, in this world, the loneliness and isolation maybe hurts in a specific way.”

The Never Ending Story

Documenting the lives of six protesters in the Egyptian uprising that started in 2011 in Tahrir Square (and continues to this day), director Jehane Noujaim’s The Square went through a major change earlier this year when the state of the revolution continued to evolve. The film premiered at Sundance, where it won the audience award, and concluded with president Mohammed Morsi stepping down, to the joy of the Tahrir protesters. But “the story kept changing,” Noujaim explained.

Morsi’s replacement turned out to be just as disagreeable as he was, so the people, outraged, returned to the square. “Initially, we [followed] the bringing down of a dictator to the election of a new president. That was the political continuum,” she continued. “The more interesting story was when all of our characters were back in the streets again.”

So, Noujaim and her crew returned to Tahrir, filmed additional footage, re-edited the film, showed it at the Toronto International Film Festival, and got another audience award. Despite the ever shifting political landscape in Egypt, Noujaim is positive the project is finished. “Our characters have gone through a full arc.”

For more info, visit SFFS.org