Review of He Named Me Malala (2015) by Mo-Jai M — 14 Nov 2015

Whilst the subject is undeniably worthy of an extensive documentary detailing her achievements and her vitality given the current state of gender politics in the world, this particular piece is damagingly enamoured with its subject, opting to spend the majority of its runtime telling us how great Malala is.

This would all be dandy, if were not for the fact that we know that and also that Guggenheim doesn't have any visible ambitions to go any further than just restating that, alongside giving a brisk overview of the lead-up to the shooting and an even briefer guide to the current issues Malala faces.

There are sparks of imagination and inspiration that Malala would actually be proud of, most notably the recurrent lusciously rendered animations. Other than this, however, this documentary is infuriatingly lacking in ambition, devoting most of its efforts towards unnecessarily manipulating our emotions with unsubtle song choices or visual juxtapositions and forgetting to give this incredible story some much needed convincing context and relevance.

There's no doubting Malala's importance and awe-inspiring courage; this underpowered and frankly bland documentary simply doesn't do its subject justice.