Writers: Tonje Hessen Schei and Sarah Tareen
Director: Sarah Tareen
The UK Asian Film Festival continues with a heartfelt documentary directed by Sarah Tareen about the street kids of Lahore, over 60 million of which remain unregistered in the country. Drinking, smoking, taking drugs and involved In different forms of crime, the film follows a group of children over six years from 2016 to 2022 as their behaviour becomes increasingly unpredictable and encounters with the police more severe. Focusing on a mixed-martial arts gym established by a Pakistani-American ex-serviceman, Kids Fight offers a note of optimism.
Told through filmed interviews with her subjects, video footage of their daily lives and screen captions outlining the alarming volume of displaced children of all ages in Pakistan, Tareen’s film is divided into three strands, each following different boys who encounter Shaheen gym and offering case studies for its interventionist role in developing good adults. Founder, former soldier and pro-fight Bashir Ahmad speaks eloquently about his mission to help the street boys and the role the gym has played and is playing in channelling the sense of dislocation these unregistered children experience in segregated areas of Lahore. Producing a champion mixed martial arts competitor will happen on day, Ahmed assumes. but his goal is to create adults with positive values
The viewer sees that play out in the contrasting stories of Bilal and Abubakar whose mixed engagement with the gym offers different opportunities. Bila is perhaps the most alarming story, interviewed between the ages of 6 and 12, he speaks openly about addictions to cigarettes and hashish from the start. Across Kids Fight, Tareen drops in on Bilal periodically and films him selling stickers on the street or being pressured by his older friends (still all under 10 at this point) to try harder drugs and stealing. Tareen reveals a drifting life, unable to accept his parents’ control, his beleaguered father speaks of not seeing Bilal for 2-3 days at a time, while his close friends soon disappear, arrested or detained permanently by child protection services. Bilal’s life is presented as shockingly typical and when he too is arrested on five counts of mostly theft, the inability to control his impulses and the vacant morality are treated with sensitivity by the filmmaker, seeing only a vulnerable boy abandoned by a country with too many children to take care of.
The alternative example is Abubakar whose attendance at the gym and developing skill in mixed martial arts leads to local and national competition wins. An essentially decent young man, the wildest activities include only some dirt and food throwing on his birthday and Abubakar speaks warmly of the role the gym has played in creating future paths for him. Here Tareen takes the audience into the world of filmed competition events with footage that younger boys can watch at home, inspired by the local lad making good.
Beyond the first 75-minutes, Kids Fight becomes a little distracted by the introduction of new characters and in following one of the ow adult fighters to Turkey where he is relatively unhappy, but keen to pursue competitive duly fighting. And the eventual messaging of the final 20-minutes becomes overly repetitive. This one gym though is working wonders for the boys who attend regularly but with such overwhelming numbers of unregistered children, Tareen’s compassionate film doesn’t identify a way forward for the rest.
Kids Fight is screening at the UK Asian Film Festival.
The Reviews Hub Score:
Compassionate
