Dear Future Children
Three young women from Chile, Hong Kong and Uganda share a resolve to fight for a better world.
Aside from her more obvious achievements, Greta Thunberg has done something else in that she has influenced the attitude of the press towards young people. Not so long ago headlines in the media about today’s youth were almost always negative and concerned with bad behaviour, but now the news is full of stories about the role of the younger generation in protest movements and activist events. That same focus is at the heart of this documentary made by the German director Franz Böhm, himself still in his early twenties. His film was shot in Chile, Uganda and Hong Kong and features three such figures and it is, perhaps, also in keeping with the times that the chosen three in addition to being in the same age group as Böhm are all females. One of them, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, is indeed like Greta Thunberg committed to doing all she can about climate change. She speaks from personal experience citing the flooding in Uganda which ruined crops and deprived her parents of their livelihood as farmers and she explains that she espoused this particular cause as being the most important one of all due to the fact that it is an issue that affects everybody. Probably less disillusioned than Greta Thunberg over what speeches can achieve, she appeared at a climate summit in Copenhagen in 2019 calling out for action rather than words and that episode in her life is included in this film’s concluding section.
In contrast to Hilda, Pepper in Hong Kong and Rayen in Santiago (neither identified by their full names) take to the streets and do so as political activists eager to support democratic principles. Pepper is fighting to prevent China’s inroads on the rights of the people of Hong Kong but, as Beijing’s pressure builds leading to the new security laws imposed in 2020, she is forced to concede the need to hide away and to accept that she is now powerless. Street scenes showing violence by the authorities in Hong Kong are all too similar to what we see in Santiago where Rayen, long aware of the suffering of the city’s poor, is increasingly energised by the increasing hostility shown by those in power (their actions being fully and openly approved by the President when he is heard declaring war on the citizens who are taking to the streets).
Finding further inspiration in her own father, Rayen is the one who most forcefully resists any compromise or withdrawal from action and it is she who speaks of the need to fight on for the sake of her children and their future lives. Each of the three central figures is heard giving voice-over comments in English, but elsewhere dialogue is generally covered through subtitles. Intercutting the three accounts works well since the settings are so distinct and provide variety. Each tale is affecting in itself, but the chief impact of Dear Future Children lies in bringing home to us the fact that these youngsters are not alone but part of a generation that is committed to fighting injustice and to making the world a better place.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Pepper, Rayen, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, Anselmo Acuña, Nicole Kramm Caifal, Joan Kantu Else.
Dir Franz Böhm, Pro Johannes Schubert, Ansgar Wörner and Jamie Gamache, Ph Friedemann Leis, Ed Daniela Schramm Moura, Music Hannes Bueber and Leonard Küßner.
Nightrunner Productions/Schubert Film/Lowkey Films/Übergrafisch-Dartmouth Films.
89 mins. Germany/UK/Austria. 2021. Rel: 17 November 2021. Cert. 15 .
