“If you stay here you either get locked up or knocked up,” explains Gemma, the Scottish teenager at the center of “Scheme Birds.” Still, she hopes to spend the rest of her life in her struggling hometown. She could go anywhere, she says, including Ibiza. But she has no interest in leaving Motherwell. Soon into the doc, Gemma finds herself meeting the same fate as so many others from her town — she’s knocked up. Before the end of Ellen Fiske and Ellinor Hallin’s doc, another character is locked up.
Gemma doesn’t seem especially phased by the news of her unexpected pregnancy. “I don’t run away from anything,” she says. “I run to it.” In many ways, she is mature for her age. She’s had no choice but to grow up fast. Gemma hasn’t seen her mom, who is described as having a drug problem, since she was a baby, and has no interest in reuniting with her. “I know it sounds bad but I don’t want to meet her anymore,” Gemma reveals. “Didn’t need her for 18 years and she didn’t need me.” Gemma has been raised by her grandfather, a pigeonbreeder who runs a boxing club that he hopes will keep teens away from drinking and drugs by giving them an avenue to get their frustrations out.
Despite her well-deserved rep as a formidable fighter and her fiery temper, Gemma has a certain vulnerability about her. Hallin described her as having “a hard yet fragile and poetic approach” in an interview with us. In the span of the doc alone, we see Gemma experience a lifetime’s worth of trauma and hardship, but true to her word, she never runs away, only towards — though the direction she takes comes as a surprise.
“Through Gemma’s eyes we see the aftermath of a societal collapse — a story traditionally told about and by hardened men. But in Gemma’s story there is also hope for a better future,” Fiske told us. “She becomes determined to find a safe path. I hope that people who watch the film get a glimpse of the youth’s perspective and can relate to their stories, even if they don’t live in a Scottish scheme.”
“Scheme Birds” already has plenty of fans stateside — it was named Best Documentary at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. The film is now available on VOD.
