Sonita’s protagonist is a rapper with the spirit of a filmmaker. The first sound in the documentary is of scissors cutting paper. The very first frame is a close-up on a picture of a screaming concert audience shot from the the stage. Director Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami introduces Sonita Alidazeh, a 18-year-old Afghan refugee, editing her dream life. Magazine pages of concert photos and Western pop stars are the icons of her aspiration. She carefully tapes cutouts of her head onto the visages of her idols. But right now, they are only documents of other lives taped down in her notebook. Sonita is shaping her world around her desire. It’s a luxury we take for granted, yet it feels like pure activism here.
It’s not hard to find a reason why Maghami would follow this young woman throughout the streets of Tehran, Iran, where Sonita has lived for the past 8 years. She is a spirited presence full of vitality and gumption. For a Western viewer, it’s almost undeniable that her future is bright. She takes the life around her – the war that has ravaged her homeland of Afghanistan, the oppression from the Afghan tradition on the female life – and crafts anthems of anger. And her songs are really good. They are clear-eyed and passionate. Music is her filter, and her tongue leads us directly to her soul.
At the beginning of the film, Sonita is simply observatory. We see her day-to-day school life with other Afghan girls. She performs mini-concerts for her classmates during breaks. There’s an intimate shared moment between her and a friend where she raps a verse that brings the other young girl to tears. The camera goes everywhere she does. Given its subject’s dreams, Sonita actually plays like an unofficial fan film in the moment of celebrity. Maghami clearly believes in her. They are kindred spirits.
At one point in her bedroom, Sonita asks for the camera to be turned off so she can remove her scarf. The director questions why not just remove it as she films. It wouldn’t be appropriate; her family would be angry. This is one of the first moments in the film where the pretext of following Sonita’s life gives way to more. Ghaemmaghami is challenging notions. She wants to push this young, fierce woman to do more than what’s expected. It’s a moment of verité that introduces a new character in Sonita’s story: the director herself.
As the subject-director relationship begins to take new form, tradition simultaneously (thanks to good editing) inevitably rears its head. Being from Afghanistan, there are certain customs that hang over Sonita’s life. Most tragic is the selling of young women as brides to potential buyer-suitors. Literally, she is worth $9,000. And that reality, oft-suppressed by her fiery passion, sets in when Sonita’s mother visits from home – the first time since she has fled Afghanistan – to take her back to be sold. Her brother needs the money to buy his own wife. The stakes of the film and of real life are raised.
What takes place next is an hour of thrilling providence that at times plays like a prison break or heist film. Ghaemmaghami steps from behind the camera to intervene in her subject’s life. It’s strange and beautiful because that kind of behavior from a documentarian is usually out-of-bounds. The director is there to observe, at times edit and question, but never to shape the story from within like she does here. We even hear Ghaemmaghami question it herself. But nothing can stop providence’s prompting. And a chain of events set off by her director-friend-mother-angel begin to change the trajectory of Sonita’s life.
Sonita is about this young rapper and her dreams. But it also lets its text push into an enthralling incarnation of the heart of documentary/nonfiction filmmaking. What emerges is one of the most inspiring stories I’ve seen on film. It’s a story about women taking control of life, writing their own history, bucking oppression, and loving their neighbors.
Filmmakers follow their subjects because they are compelled by that certain person or event. Sonita bravely asks, what happens when the subject you are compelled by faces a reality you can’t accept? A reality that is not only unfortunate but oppressive and unjust? Ghaemmaghami herself becomes part of the story. Her love of of Sonita, and of women, compels her to pass the camera to another crew member. She steps onto the other side, risking everything. She learned a lot from Sonita. Thankfully, it is not a rigid formal experiment to test the boundaries of nonfiction film. It’s not clever trickery. It’s providence. It’s finding a kindred spirit and fighting for her. It’s knowing that dreams and aspirations are often only achieved when people who believe in you take action. The world is a better place because Sonita’s voice is heard.