2020 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival: Virtual Edition Mini-Reviews – Part 2

Read part 1 of our 2020 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival coverage here.

The Wheels of Wonder

Play is a very important aspect of every child’s development. It gets them moving, stimulates their imagination, and helps develop problem-solving skills. This is especially true for children in refugee camps in Beirut, and this documentary follows a team of inspired engineers, designers, and play experts that create a prototype play cart for these children. Described as looking like a bizarre combination of Ikea and NASA, the play cart is filled with hundreds of loose parts for the children to play with, as well as the cart itself which can be reassembled into a portable playground.

Director Roger Ungers really hones in on the details of bringing this cart to life. From the design stage, the trial and error of trying to build a prototype, and to the testing of the cart in schools and refugee camps in Beirut, it’s a fascinating and insightful journey the film takes. Seeing the excitement and joy that the play cart brings the children when they have the opportunity to use it and how thankful the rest of the community are is very heartwarming. Other than the pure joy the play cart brings the children and the community, the refugees have very little voice in this film and its absence is rather noticeable. With very few interviews or comments from these people and its heavy focus on the cart itself, The Wheels of Wonder very much feels like a corporate presentation for the play cart company’s shareholders to invest in this project and less like a documentary film.

Some missed opportunities in its presentation aside, The Wheels of Wonder is still a joyful little documentary that at 68 minutes, is a short and sweet journey into creating happiness for refugee children.

Hamtramck, USA

Welcome to Hamtramck, Michigan. A neighborhood in Detroit described as ‘the world in two square miles’. This once-thriving community of Polish immigrants during the American industrial boom was revitalized in the 1990s, becoming home to many Yemeni and Bangladeshi immigrants. Before too long, Hamtramck quickly became the first-ever town with a Muslim majority in the United States. Though a harmonious town that prides themselves on their diversity, the different communities are pitted against each other when it comes to politics. This documentary not only presents a portrait of every life in Hamtramck, but also follows the mayoral and city council candidates from the different ethnic groups of Hamtramck on the campaign trail to the local election.

By centering the film around the local election, Directors Razi Jafri and Justin Feltman are able to explore Hamtramck and its diverse and multicultural population with an incredible amount of detail. It is through the mayoral and city council candidates that the issues in Hamtramck and their personal visions to make it a better place are addressed and realized. There’s Karen Majewski, the mayor of 12 years up for re-election, adamant she can still represent the people in the wake of the town’s aging Polish population and rising Muslim population, but also advocates for equal representation in her government. Her opponent, on the other hand, Kamal Rahman is a community activist whose grassroots campaign is gaining momentum with promises of free college tuition and reducing water bills. Then there’s Fadal Al-Marsoumi, a charismatic, caring 23-year-old city council candidate from an Iraqi family that looms as a dark horse outsider in the polls. No matter their background or ethnicity, each candidate all strives for the same goal of making Hamtramck a better place that welcomes and is inclusive of everybody.

In the age of aggravated hostility, ignorance, and hatred towards minorities in Trump’s America, seeing a community built by people from all corners of the earth, living in harmony and working together to make it a better place for everybody inspires hope that things can change. Hamtramck, USA is an in-depth and fascinating window into the immigrant experience in America and the politics of identity.

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