Documentary Review: 'Flying Paper'

On the Gaza Strip in Palestine, a group of children face daily hardship in the form of an ongoing war. With violent sieges being a constant threat to their lives, the youth of Gaza find comfort and hope through a shared love: making and flying kites, the same pastime their families used to get through troubled times. Even as the world around them becomes bleak, the colorful kites they fly gives them a renewed optimism for the future.

It is through this optimism that the kids of the Gaza Strip begin working together to accomplish a shared goal: breaking the Guinness World Record for the most kites ever simultaneously flown. The work is time-consuming and at times difficult, but together, these children will pull together in their effort to break the world record--and show that no matter what challenges life throws them, their determination will get them through it.

Clocking in at about 51 minutes, Flying Paper is a documentary that covers a fairly simple true story: the children of a community working together to break a world record for kite flying. If set in the US, such a story would likely become fodder for sugary Buzzfeed posts or heartwarming filler pieces for local news channels. But taking place in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, such a goal pursued by young children takes on a more serious connotation. While Flying Paper mostly cultivates an uplifting mood for itself, it never allows you to shake the nagging feeling of melancholy that accompanies almost the entire documentary.

Flying Paper is at its best when it strikes the perfect balance between inspiring optimism and brute realism in regards to the Gaza children's situation, and how their kite fascination and world record aspirations are tied into it. Through symbolic animated segments and shots of the desolate ruins left by the Gaza sieges, directors Nitin Sawhney and Roger Hill (the latter of whom would make his feature film debut with 2018's Huckleberry) allows the viewer to see that beneath the colorful kites and giggling smiles of the kids, these are children growing up in a war zone, and have lived through more violence and destruction than any child should have to experience.

But despite the dour setting, Flying Paper is ultimately a story of resilience and finding hope in even the roughest circumstances. In spite of the harsh environment they call home, the children seen in Flying Paper never allow it to get the best of them. Instead, they seek refuge from the troubles they face through their passion for kites--a passion that was instilled in them by their parents and grandparents. As such, Flying Paper becomes less about breaking a world record and more about a community using art and working together toward a goal as a means of braving hard times. As such, seeing all the kites in the air during the record-breaking kite flying session is beautiful for more than one reason.

On the downside, however, there's the thorn in Flying Paper's side that becomes a consistent misstep throughout much of the documentary: its pacing. Despite its moderately short runtime, there were more than a few spots where Flying Paper felt dragged down by needless padding. So much time is spent on footage of the children constructing their kites and testing them out that it feels like we see more of this than we see the deeper--and more engaging--reasons why they became so fascinated with kites. This unevenness leaves parts of Flying Paper feeling like a chore to get through, which is not the sort of mood that one should feel when watching this documentary. Had some of the fat been trimmed from Flying Paper's runtime and allowed for more time to be spent on the Gaza kids themselves rather than the details of their kite project, this sense of tedium could've been avoided or at least mitigated.

But when the documentary cultivates the right atmosphere for itself, Flying Paper proves to be a heartfelt and thought-provoking documentary. The film is at its best when its focus is squarely on the children of Gaza and their ambitions for breaking the record: to show the world that their lives and their country matter and that the challenges they face won't beat them. Along with this well-maintained mood, unofficial project leader Musa and aspiring journalist Abeer stand out as the most inspiring of the children and the animated segments (while obviously made on a low budget) do well at establishing the somber side of Flying Paper and are appropriately reminiscent of children's drawings--an aspect that hammers home the poignancy of the Gaza Strip children's plight. It's not perfect, but when it's able to maintain the focus its subject matter deserves, Flying Paper makes for a solid documentary with a message the world could really use right now.

Score: 6 out of 10 "Crescent Moon" kites.