I Am Because We Are

When I started watching I Am Because We Are, I didn't know it was written, narrated, and produced by Madonna. In fact, I spent much of the first half trying to decipher who this disembodied, almost savior-like narrator was, a voice delivering moral reflections on Africa's suffering and resilience, but never appearing on camera. That initial choice set the tone: the story is framed by an outsider's journey, with Malawi and its people positioned as a backdrop for her awakening.

The first half of the film was difficult to watch, not just because of the harrowing subject matter, the impact of HIV/AIDS on orphans, but because of the way it was presented. Madonna speaks of her mission and guilt, pointing out the prevalence of witchcraft and stigma, while admiring the children's optimism despite their hardship. This gaze felt flattening and reductive: the Malawian characters were presented as noble, admirable, even mystifying, but rarely allowed to speak as full, complex individuals. Although the children and others are technically given space to speak from the beginning, their words are selectively used to support the Western narrator's own sentiments and assumptions, rather than as complete stories of their own. The film's treatment of witchcraft and stigma is particularly problematic: it demonizes these aspects of Malawian culture and flattens them into mere evidence of backwardness, without offering sufficient context about their social meaning or role.

It was only in the second half that the film began to resonate more strongly. Here, the children's own voices and stories took center stage, and their dignity and resilience came through more authentically, without so much external narration or framing. This shift showed what the documentary could have been if it had trusted its subjects more fully from the start.

Since watching, I've reflected on what made me uncomfortable. The film exemplifies what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak called "the problem of representation": even when well-intentioned, Western filmmakers often speak for marginalized people, instead of letting them speak. Similarly, Claude Lévi-Strauss observed how Western observers tend to exoticize other cultures, projecting meaning onto ordinary behaviors, something this film does when it romanticizes communal life and resilience as if they are inherently superior to Western alienation. What Madonna reads as an African paradox, materially poor but spiritually rich, is perhaps just the baseline of how Malawian society expects people to behave. These are not magical or saintly characters; they are humans shaped by their culture and circumstances.

That is the recurring problem I now see in many Western documentaries about the Global South: they claim to give voice to the voiceless, but end up dominating the narrative arena, leaving local people as supporting characters in someone else's moral drama. This gaze is very prevalent and repetitive in most of Western made documentaries, I noticed the same dynamic recently in Everything is Temporary (2024) by Juliette Klinke, which similarly admired the optimism of a young Myanmar woman while flattening her into a symbol of noble suffering rather than presenting her as a full human being. I Am Because We Are has good intentions, and some moments of genuine power, but it ultimately re-centers the Western gaze, failing to fully trust the people it seeks to honor.

The second poorest country in the world. A place where 66% of the population exists on less that $1 a day. A place where children cannot go to secondary school because they don't have the $10 per term. This is Malawi.

Malawi is also a country of 12 million people, where one million are children who are orphans because their parents have died of AIDS. This film makes it extremely difficult to face these children and not feel that they are worse off than anywhere else in the world.

However, it would not be a great film if that is all it did. Despite the poverty and disease and the clinging to destructive traditions and the superstitions, the film presents hope for these children and the country.

It also presents lessons for us. As JFK said "Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." Malawi is looking for help, not a handout. They are being educated in accepting their own responsibility for their lives. Something that is lacking in so many of our neighbors who always blame others for their misfortune. They use this inner strength to smile and laugh and sing in the face of abject poverty. They need our help to overcome their problems and grow their own country.

The seeds are being planted, but the need to assist is presented in a film that should move all.

Thank you, Madonna, for bringing this to us.

beautiful imagines, interesting interviews, real Africa with its real modern problems. The beginning of the movie can be heartbreaking but the movie offers hope for future and some of the solutions for the problems Malawi is facing. It will also encourage you to question your own life and the meaning of the happiness in our society. This movie helped me to discover Malawi on the map and I will always remember the faces on those kids. Celebrities like Madonna can and should use their popularity among young people to talk about issues we normally rather not to talk about.