Review: Favoriten

Immigrant children learn German in an elementary school

The 48th Hong Kong International Film Festival is on and I managed to catch a film while here -- and with YTSL no less!

We watched a documentary called Favoriten by Austrian director Ruth Beckermann that follows a class of mostly immigrant students and their teacher in an elementary school in a district of Vienna called Favoriten.

The film follows the premise that in Vienna's elementary school system, over 60 percent of students don't have German as their first language.

The students reveal honest, raw emotions

The students are from various places, like Syria, Turkey, and Ukraine, and they learn German together as it is the official language in Austria needed for work. 

These children are wonderful subjects, as they have a range of emotions and the way they talk reveal their thought process, their upbringing, or cultural background.

Their teacher is young and kind. She wears heavy makeup, and casual clothes. Not only does she teach them the curriculum, but also helps them resolve disputes with fellow classmates. She reasons with them or encourages them to apologise or to explain the incident, not only as a way to get them to speak more German, but also to learn how to get along with others. 

One girl accuses a boy sitting at the same table of bothering her; she claims he is talking non stop, but he denies it. Another more serious accusation is when a girl says the boys accuse her of having lice and they hit her, but they vehemently deny it. The teacher says they cannot accuse her of this when she doesn't have lice and adds that when she was a girl she had lice too, so what's the big deal?

Viewers watch the children visit a mosque and many of the students are Muslim and are proud of their religion. Another time they go to a Catholic church, but no one in the class is Roman Catholic. They also go to swimming class and in a funny scene they kids learn parts of the body, including words like penis and vagina, and point them out on the drawing projected on the wall.

The teacher (left) tries to reason with the pupils

It's also interesting to watch the teacher interact with the children's families in parent-teacher interviews. Some parents can speak German, while others rely on an older child to translate; overall they are grateful to the teacher for teaching their child. Most of the parents are keen for their children to integrate into Austria as much as possible, while one expresses reservations and considers taking his daughter back to Turkey. Perhaps he is tired of discrimination or doesn't feel welcome in Vienna.

Favoriten follows the students over a few years with the same teacher so they have become very close. When she meets with each child to go over their test results -- not even an exam, each one has a different reaction that's honest and emotional; one child bursts into tears, stressed out and devastated that the viewer can't help but feel for him.

There is also a hint of the strain of resources in the school system, as the in-house counsellor has been assigned elsewhere and a psychologist won't be coming anytime soon; there aren't even enough teachers to teach which is concerning.

Nevertheless it's a heart-felt film, with a lot of honest observations and emotions thanks to the children who speak their minds, while their teacher tries hard to help them peel away biases and help them to become more confident and happy in their new hometown.

Favoriten

Directed by Ruth Beckermann

118 minutes

HK Government to Ban Protest Anthem

The song was the unofficial anthem of the 2019 protests

Just to make sure no one will every play the wrong Hong Kong anthem again, the government is seeing a court order to permanently bar anyone from trying to using music related to the song that became the unofficial anthem for the 2019 protests.

On Monday the justice secretary filed an unprecedented application to the High Court for an injunction against Glory to Hong Kong. The writ asked the court to restrain those harbouring criminal intent from "broadcasting, performing, printing, publishing, selling, offering for sale, distributing, disseminating, displaying or reproducing in any way" the protest song.

March of the Volunteers is HK's official anthem

The injunction targets anyone who intends to incite others to separate Hong Kong from China, commit a seditious act, or insult the national anthem, March of the Volunteers.

The court order, if granted, would also prohibit anyone from playing the song in a manner that would cause it "to be mistaken as the national anthem insofar as the [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region] is concerned", or suggest that Hong Kong "is an independent state and has a national anthem of her own."

In addition the thorough court filing listed YouTube videos of 32 versions of the song, from instrumentals to it sung in Mandarin, English, German, Dutch, Japanese and Korean.

This move comes just before the fourth anniversary of the large-scale anti-extradition protests that saw 1 million and then 2 million people out on the streets on June 9 and 16, 2019 respectively.

The wrong song has been played many times

So just to make sure no one will ever mistake Glory to Hong Kong for the official Hong Kong anthem, it will make it seditious to play it in any form.

From now on, any country hosting a Hong Kong team for a sporting tournament will be terrified of playing the wrong song.

How does that inspire anyone to visit the city?