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Banner Bandits (2017)

★½ — Banner Bandits (2017)

Banner Bandits is a short documentary produced under the auspices of the Guam Department of Youth Affairs and the GIFF Independents strand of the Guam International Film Festival, making it very much a community-funded, institution-backed production rather than a commercial release. Director Don Muña frames the film around Guam's annual Liberation Day Parade, a major cultural occasion commemorating the island's liberation from Japanese occupation in 1944, using that public setting as a backdrop for youth advocacy around alcohol and tobacco advertising. The cast, led by Adonis Mendiola, David Afaisen and Rebecca Respicio, appears to be largely non-professional. At 56 minutes, it sits in an awkward middle ground between short film and feature, which is fairly typical of youth-programme productions where the brief shapes the runtime.

A-Z World Movie Tour Guam Was hoping to find an actual film on this journey but Banner Bandits will have to do. Nearly 1hr long and honestly that was far too long here. It's a really informative piece about the alcohol and tobacco advertising practices in Guam and how they're clearly geared towards children and young people. The film maker had clearly spent time analysing, fact finding and presenting this. However... you get the point after about 10 minutes. The rest just repeats. The interviews don't really add a whole lot. Overall, it just feels a bit boring

Rating: ★½ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2025-06-23

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