Heiress of the Wind (Nicaragua) 

From the ACTIVISMO! series, director Gloria Carrión Fonseca presents a personal history of the Nicaraguan revolution built around sometimes uncomfortably intimate interviews with her parents, both prominent, frontline Sandinistas—and both, significantly, from prosperous families. The film tempts us with its narrative of a frightened child often abandoned to the cause. But compelling archival footage aside, the title reflects a general airiness that quickly becomes tiresome. Worse than that is the creeping sense that Fonseca’s doc would win the approval of the US State Department—at a time, funnily enough, when the government of Daniel Ortega grapples with the latest wave of foreign tampering. (Not that the New York Times would call it that.) It culminates in a string of interviews with former Contras presented as revelatory, conducted by a well-connected filmmaker whose education included stops at New York University and the London School of Economics. Hmm... 

Heiress of the Wind screens at the Cinematheque on Wednesday (August 29)