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Divas/Brotherhood review – powerful studies examine the challenges of growing up
Máté Körösi’s documentary about a trio of troubled young women in Budapest and Francesco Montagner’s film following three sons in a Bosnian shepherd family explore the path to adulthood
Here is a strong pair of documentaries being shown together at the Bertha Dochouse in London; they are ostensibly mirror images of each other: a female trio and a male trio, urban Hungary and rural Bosnia, chatty and taciturn. But both Divas (★★★★☆) and Brotherhood (★★★★☆) are powerfully characterised works about young people that tunnel inside their milieus to broach questions of growing up and assuming personal responsibility.
Only six years older than the three 20-year-olds he encounters on the windowsill of a Budapest school that gives expelled students a last chance to get a diploma, director Máté Körösi seems self-conscious about following around the young women dubbed “the divas” by their classmates. Preened to the max, the group comprises new-agey, dreadlocked Tina, trucker-mouthed karaoke hostess Szani and the Bowie-coiffed, depressive Emese. Körösi appears fascinated by their sass and frivolity, but admits that, by studying them, he is looking to understand his own case of arrested development.
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