Film Review: I'm Wanita, Hot Docs 2021

Sometimes documentarians just luck out and their subjects are ‘characters’ without much effort. Matthew Walker has found gold in Wanita Bahtiyar, Australia’s Queen of Honky Tonk, and has honed his footage into a compelling narrative arc that provides all the highs and lows we expect of fictional dramas.

Ever since she was a little girl, Wanita has been passionate about country music, aspiring to follow in Hank Williams’ and Lorretta Lynn’s footsteps. As she indicates, she is autistic, and her early years were spent memorizing and parroting every country record she could find. Of course, a dream of performing and recording music in Nashville was inevitable, and I’m Wanita depicts her journey to do just that, on a recording tour that also stops in New Orleans and Memphis along the way.

As the old adage goes, no woman is an island, and that is where this film flexes its dramatic muscles. Wanita is married to Muammer “Baba” Bahtiyar, an older Turkish man that she met while involved in a marriage immigration scheme. If he looks like a cowboy, it’s because Wanita wanted him that way – always fantasizing of her ‘rescue’ by a hardened, wizened man of the frontier. To say that husband and wife are yin and yang would be an understatement: she is the freewheeling sort, who always gives money to those less fortunate (even when she does not have any to spare), and he constantly wonders how Wanita and Allah are getting along. He would like Wanita to be more traditional and cook him dinners, but even I can tell that would never happen in a hundred years.

There are two other influential people in I’m Wanita are worth mentioning. One is Archer, who appears to be a hanger-on to Wanita’s success (she found him under a bridge, she says). However, one would be neglecting Archer’s presence as a part of Wanita’s support system, and as a musical talent in his own right if one only looked at him in stereotypical and simplistic terms.

There is also Gleny Rae Virus, another talented musician, but who is being drafted as Wanita’s manager for her American adventure. Gleny embodies the conscience of the film. Wanita fits the picture of artistic ambition/ eccentric creative (maybe genius) to a T, and does not have much room for anything else outside of that purview. Her desire to be number one against all odds meets its match in alcoholism and in not heeding the advice of those who are attempting to look out for her best interests.

Needless to say, Wanita’s relationship with her daughter is in shambles: and it looks like her relationships with other supports in her life are in danger. 

Gleny has a plan, but the question is whether or not the plan will succeed with all the detours that Wanita wants to take, and with the booze that is found everywhere Wanita goes. As Gleny says, it is rather ironic that Wanita will show more interest in supporting homeless folks on the street than being a team player, when it was her team that got her there in the first place.

For a train to speed on its way, there need to be railway tracks – and the question at the end of the day is, whether or not the Honky Tonk train recognizes the importance of what is underneath her feet. For a captivating character study of how a Type A personality clashes with her supporters (or finds ways to somehow co-exist with them) – look no further than this documentary.    

I’m Wanita screened in Canada at Hot Docs 2021.
Visit wanitathemovie.com.au/watch for feature screening opportunities.