Educational Media Reviews Online

Baggage is a highly watchable documentary film focusing on a group of teenage immigrants who have recently arrived in Canada from various locations around the world, including: Iran, South Korea, Moldova, Egypt, Brazil, Saint Vincent, China, and more. The film opens with this group of young people entering and assembling on a bare stage, each holding a suitcase. From here, the action cuts to Paul-Gérin-Lajoie-d’Outremont High School in Montreal, where the students enter their drama class and learn that this year’s project will be a film “about what it’s like to be a teen immigrant who comes to Quebec.” This is an apt description of Baggage.

Throughout Baggage, the filmmakers document the students’ individual experiences as new immigrants and also document the students’ work on the film’s creation in various settings. The film provides viewers with a good understanding of the students’ diverse backgrounds as well as their common experiences as immigrants; it also provides some insight into various aspects of their diverse home cultures (including: dance, music, religious traditions, and the school experience).

The main focus of Baggage is on the documentation of the creative process employed in developing the film, and fascinating excerpts from various developmental stages of this process are included throughout. Students are shown participating in various dramatic exercises and activities that help them both to express the challenges they face as immigrants, and also to shape depictions of these challenges for performance. Baggage explores the impact of immigration on the individual students and their families through excerpts from their interviews, workshops, and parent-teacher conferences, as well as by direct Q and A with the students about their ongoing assimilation into the culture of Quebec. The film also provides insight into the details of building a performance piece, showing scenes depicting the role of the director/teacher in shaping and fine-tuning the words and actions of the student actors for performance. A formal “performance,” or finished product, however, is not the main focus of the film; on the contrary, the film (and the students’ overall experience) seems less about the achievement of any single goal or event, and more about the ongoing challenges and experience of assimilation. The result is this engaging, emotional, and moving film, which provides powerful illustrations of the challenges facing the students (both as immigrants and creative artists).

This 52-minute-long documentary is presented mainly in French, with English subtitles. It provides valuable insights into the processes of immigration and assimilation, as well as that of the communal creation of original performance in an educational setting (although the details of the creative process are not explicitly delineated by the filmmakers, its main components and basic design are clear). It is easy to watch and will provide worthwhile and engaging viewing for anyone interested in the experience of young immigrants or in “how to” create a performance based on personal experience in a high school setting. The film contains no objectionable material. It is likely to be most relevant to those studying communication studies, especially intercultural communication, and also to those in the fields of theatre arts, filmmaking, linguistics, and education.

Awards

2018 Festival Vues sur mer – Grand Prize & Audience Award; 2017 Rencontres internationals du documentaire de Montréal – Women Inmates’ Award; 2017 Festival du cinéma international d’Abitibi-Témiscamingue – Télébec Award; 2017 Festival du cinema de la ville de Québec – People’s Choice award for a Canadian feature film