OXI - The Greek Word for "No"
2015 · 17m · United States
Directed by Theopi Skarlatos, Paul Mason
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative, tense
The crunch is here.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A documentary about saying no should be contrarian gold, but instead it's earnest and straightforward—which somehow makes it more subversive than if it tried to be weird about it.
The formal architecture here is impeccable: a single word as both linguistic object and political statement, examined through rigorous montage that positions itself squarely in the essay-documentary tradition of assertion through structure.
The decision to make the word itself—its sound, its repetition, its weight in different mouths—the protagonist rather than the people saying it is what transforms this from political statement into something genuinely unsettling.
Reviews
There was this crazy period at the beginning, where everyone was just shocked by this party that essentially said no to everything you've imposed on our country for the past five years — 'We're here to do something different, we're here to actually negotiate' — which is something none of the other governments even tried to do.