Hot Docs 2019 Reviews: Shooting the Mafia, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World, and Assholes: A Theory

May 01, 2019- Permalink

Shooting the Mafia

Director Kim Longinotto’s Shooting the Mafia follows photographer Letizia Battaglia, whose coverage of Palermo’s La Cosa Nostra made her an important figure during the Mafia’s bloody battles during the Seventies. She escaped a controlling father when she was 16 by getting married, but when her controlling husband forbade her from going to school, she escaped that situation. She became Italy’s first female photographer for a daily newspaper. She took her camera into the seedy underbelly of murders and retribution, beating the police to the scenes. She had a second career as a politician and, now in her 80s, she’s still a vibrant figure and activist.

Battaglia is a fascinating figure, but at times the doc is in search of direction. Do we delve into the passionate woman with a voracious appetite for work, life and love? Do we examine her work and question whether her access and photographs were sometimes used by her subjects as a way to send messages or incite fear? Longinotto uses a mix of Battaglia’s photos, archival footage and classic Italian cinema. It’s a fascinating study, but there’s a feeling it could have been better.

Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World, from director Hans Pool, follows the citizen journalists of Bellingcat.com as they risk their lives and use open source investigative tools to try and uncover the truth in a world where images and videos can be manipulated and minds manipulated by social media. In the doc, they try and ascertain where a Syrian bombing video was shot, who was ringleading the white nationalist protests in Charlottesville and whether a Russian missile shot down Malaysian Flight 17 over Ukraine. Their methods are often accessible to the public. They see a Russian military vehicle in a free satellite photo on one roadway and then another on the other side of the border. Facebook posts by a group of wives and girlfriends suggest where their loved ones might be. The problems are crowd-sourced by the group. One might be an expert in determining time and location by the sun’s shadows, another might be able to geolocate based on rock formations. Their work embarrasses and angers some governments but can also be a tool used by others who are committed to getting the truth out, as long as it doesn’t anger or expose their own wrongdoings. It’s a fascinating look at people who just want to get to the truth.

I ended the day with Assholes: A Theory, a doc from director John Walker based on Aaron James’ book of the same name. It examines the rise of “asshole culture” and the people and groups that embrace it in frat houses, White Houses, Wall Street boardrooms and social media apps. Why do these, well, assholes thrive in some fields and why do some people find them attractive or even electable? From LGBTQ activist Vladimir Luxuria to psychologists to Monty Python’s John Cleese (who was at the screening) Walker and his talking heads examine these noxious members of society.