Doctor and professor Anu Kantele lives by a philosophy of doing what she can to help the people she comes across without allowing a fear of making mistakes to hold her back in director Mia Halme’s latest feature documentary, People We Come Across. The film made its international premiere at this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival.
Situated in Grand Popo, Benin, Kantele leads a study on diarrhea with the goal of developing a vaccine that would save the lives of millions of children in developing countries from diarrhea-related illnesses. Kantele’s test subjects? Over 700 Finnish tourists sign up for a diarrhea vacation of a lifetime, traveling to Grand Popo in rotating groups to provide Kantele’s team with stool samples and do some sight-seeing. Kantele and her team use humour to dismantle the tourists’ initial discomfort and awkwardness about openly discussing their toilet habits. The Finnish tourists are also encouraged to engage with the community through volunteer and fundraising work, showcasing the cultural divide and harmful consequences of aid that can arise despite the best of intentions.
Halme is known for her documentary work that explores human connections and the complexity of relationships. Her 2011 feature documentary, Forever Yours, examined the intricacies of familial bonds between parents and children and won the prize for best feature documentary at the 2012 Jussi awards, Finland’s principal industry awards.
In People We Come Across, Halme uses the vaccine study as a backdrop to explore relationship dynamics between the Finns and Grand Popo community members. Within the first few minutes of the film we encounter a clash of cultures and medicine. Kantele seeks to treat Jules, a Beninese patient, but must first understand the Beninese treatment previously used and ask Jules for permission to treat him using Finnish methods.
During their stay, the Finnish scientists and tourists build relationships with local community members, and Halme captures the difficulty in balancing help versus harm when it comes to temporary relationships built on providing aid. Augustin is a cheery youth in the Grand Popo community who often interacts with Kantele and her team. We glean that Augustin connected with Kievo, a Finn tourist from a previous rotation group, who sponsors Augustin so he can attend school and support his family by selling nuts. Augustin comments that Kievo is like a father to him, and while we never meet Kievo, we encounter the residual effects of their connection. Kievo sends Augustin a new bicycle to help him with work and to get to school. However, when tragedy strikes and Kievo dies suddenly, it threatens Augustin’s ability to continue his education. Fortunately, one of Kievo’s relatives offers to continue the sponsorship, but it highlights the potential consequences of aid through gifts, as well as the impact of short term solutions for longer term concerns. By the film’s end, the entire Finnish team has left Benin, and we learn that Augustin’s bicycle has broken, leaving us with many questions about Augustin and the impact of the Finns’ departure on the community they left behind.
Augustin’s story is one of several that Halme presents in People We Come Across. We briefly and intermittently follow up with Jules, the injured young man from the film’s opening. Halme also examines one Finn tourist’s fundraising efforts and volunteer work at an orphanage, and the difficulties that arise when the Finnish team tries to change the intended destination of those donations—a change that frustrates the local community members the team has been working with. Halme returns to the scientific narrative as well, documenting aspects of the team’s work as they examine stool specimens, store them in freezers and ship them back to Finland for further research.
Halme touches on many important themes and issues, but sometimes stretches those threads too thin, providing more of an overview of various humanitarian and scientific concerns rather than an in-depth look into any one of them. Halme and Kantele briefly touch on the scientific community’s rapidly increasing alarm over the rise of antibiotic resistance and the spread of super bacteria, but the film never expands on the issue, although we learn at the end that Kantele has shifted her work to focus on that area. We also learn that the results of the vaccine study at the heart of the film were “good” and that the research continues in The Gambia and Zambia, where the vaccine is tested on local children. This left me with many questions, including when the children of the community the Finnish team had lived and worked in would be able to receive the vaccine.
Despite my desire for a more in-depth look into both the scientific study and the relationship dynamics between the Finns and the Grand Popo community, the film’s approach creates a balance between the narrative threads that will likely attract a wider scope of viewers.
Score: B-
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.