Beans, the first fiction film from director Tracey Deer, is playing at the New York International Children's Film Festival, but it's not exactly what most would consider a children's film. It will absolutely be rated R by the MPAA due to its steady stream of profanity and moments of potentially triggering violence, including self-harm and an attempted (fortunately thwarted) sexual assault. However, it is a film from a 12-year-old girl's perspective, and the mix of realistic coming-of-age drama and important historical education makes it a film that mature teenagers should see.
Our main character, played by Kiawentiio from Anne with an E, is named Tekehentahkhwa but uses "Beans" as a nickname. She's a Mohawk girl in Quebec applying to a mostly white prep school that her mom (Rainbow Dickinson) is pressuring her to attend while her dad (Joel Montgrand) is skeptical about it. Beans is already being pushed about in different directions, and she faces even more peer pressure when she tries to befriend a group of older, tougher teenagers.
And then there's the Oka Crisis, a series of intense and often violent conflicts between the Canadian government and the Mohawk people in the summer of 1990 over plans to build a golf course atop a Mohawk cemetery. Yes, "white people want to golf on an Indigenous burial ground" sounds like the set-up for a joke or a horror movie, but this really happened. For those unfamiliar with the recent history of anti-Indigenous racism in Canada, Beans will be an eye-opener.
Tracey Deer uses her background as a documentary filmmaker to good effect in editing together news footage of the protests and fights. Showing the real footage of the fighting negates the need to spend too much time on reenactments. While Beans and her younger sister Ruby (Violah Beauvais) at times find themselves on the barricade frontline with their dad, they're mostly separate from the action as their mom tries to protect them. However, the story becomes heartbreaking when true protection becomes impossible; racist violence is inescapable, and it's all too easy to become violent in response.
As real as much of the film feels (Deer is drawing heavily from her own childhood), the writing can at times feel a bit obvious. Each character arc gets a neat and tidy bow at the end, and the concluding moral message is something one wants to be true but might be a bit too simple a solution for deep systemic issues. None of the performances are bad, but the quality varies; Dickinson and Paulina Alexis (playing Beans' friend April) are the clear standouts of the cast.
For all its ups and downs, however, Beans is ultimately a powerful and compelling film. It combines universal experiences of growing up with a look at specific events more people should know about, making the film effectively disturbing and inspiring at once. Fans of serious-minded topical YA dramas like The Hate U Give will want to check it out.
Beans is streaming as part of the New York International Children's Film Festival through March 14. The film stars Kiawentiio, Rainbow Dickinson, Joel Montgrand, Viola Beauvais, Paulina Alexis, D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai, Jay Cardinal Villeneuve, Brittany LeBorgne and Kelly Beaudoin. It comes out in Canada on March 30 and will be released in the United States later this year.