Chloe Ruthven
2021The Do Gooders
Chloe Ruthven
British documentary filmmaker Chloe Ruthven’s grandparents were aid workers in Palestine. Growing up, she had avoided getting too involved in the subject, recalling how mention of the country made all the adults in her life angry. In her forties, after revisiting her grandmother’s book on the subject, she starts to research a documentary on the effects of foreign aid in the area and is shocked at the continued reliance on it there. Along the way she meets Lubna, a Palestinian woman who acts as her driver and fixer, and who is fiercely critical of Western aid efforts in her country. What begins as a quest to better understand her family history turns into a deeply emotional account of two women trying to understand one another. Ruthven’s determination to focus her film on deeply subjective analysis results in a unique joining of the acutely personal and complexly political. (Source: LFF programme)
The Do Gooders
Jungle Sisters
Chloe Ruthven
In 2008 the Indian Government launched an initiative to train 500 million of the rural poor to work in tits growing industrial sector; a policy that new prime minister Nerendra Modi intends to continue. This is the story of two village girls caught up in India's rapid expansion into the globalised world. Jungle Sisters follows best friends Bhanu and Bhuntu as they make the journey of their lives. Travelling 1000 miles to find a new future in Modi's business-friendly India, they take their place in the ranks of factory workers. But as the reality of life on the factory floor forces them to make a dramatic decision, the film becomes an epic tale of love, hope and survival.
Jungle Sisters
