Posted in: Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review | Tagged: daisy ridley, documentary, film, patriarchy, Review, reviews

'The Eagle Huntress' Is A Documentary About Smashing The Patriarchy

Published Sat, 26 Nov 2016 15:15:40 -0600

Last updated Sat, 27 Jan 2018 14:03:57 -0600

The Eagle Huntress is a beautiful documentary that shows us that girls can do anything they set their minds to.

Title: The Eagle Huntress
Director: Otto Bell
Summary: The Eagle Huntress follows Aisholpan, a 13-year-old girl, as she trains to become the first female in twelve generations of her Kazakh family to become an eagle hunter.

There are lots of thing that can affect your viewing of a movie. Perhaps you had a great week and you're in an amazing mood. Maybe you're not feeling well and you just want to go home. In this case I believe The Eagle Huntress affected me even more because I saw it less than a week after the American election. The Eagle Huntress follows the story of a young girl from Mongolia named Aisholpan as she follows her dream to be the first "eagle huntress" of her people. It's about a thirteen year old that is here to tell us that girls can be anything they want in an environment that seems to scream the opposite.

I can see why narrator and executive producer Daisy Ridley wanted to get involved with this documentary the moment she saw it. As a woman who embodies one of the great young women in modern cinema I can see her wanting to shine a light on a young woman in the real world that is showing up everyone else around her. We get to see Aisholpan as she learns how to hunt using the eagles from her supportive family that understands that this is her dream. There isn't anyone in her family that wants to stand in her way; early in the documentary her mother says that she accepts that they don't have a lot in common but that's okay.

The moments that ring true in The Eagle Huntress, and will do even more so for the women in the audience, are when elders are saying that Aisholpan is incapable of being a eagle hunter because she is a girl. They say she is too weak, she should be at home cooking, but Aisholpan doesn't accept that. She believes in herself and she also believes that she shouldn't have to stop being a woman to do a job meant for men. At one point her mother mentions that she wishes she had cut Aisholpan's hair shorter but Aisholpan says the length is good because it's the length for a girl.

The Eagle Huntress is the kind of documentary that keeps you engaged as it tells the story of not only one person but the history of an entire culture. It shows everyone that you have to be twice as good to make it in a job meant for men and even then there are going to be others that won't accept you. However, that doesn't mean you can't follow your dreams and in this world there isn't a better lesson we should be teaching our daughters.

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