A BFI Prize for the Documentary That Praises Quiet Resilience
At the 70th BFI London Film Festival, the Grierson Award for documentary went to Asmahan Bkerat's feature directorial debut, 'Concrete Land.' The film spends time with several generations of a mixed-race family in Jordan as they resist displacement and hostility. The jury, headed by 'Santosh' director Sandhya Suri, said it was 'refreshing, humbling and deeply relevant' to see the family's 'quiet resilience and dignity' in the face of 'the erasure of their culture and traditions,' in a noisy and often polemical world.
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A jury praising 'quiet resilience' in a 'noisy and often polemical world' is also announcing a documentary taste: patience over volume.
That framing risks making displacement palatable: 'quiet resilience' is the jury's phrase, and dignity is not the same as passivity.