Arto Halonen: Shadow of the Holy Book

Classical documentary approach: Something is wrong, we have to tell about it, let’s go and get the facts and convey them to the world. That’s what Arto Halonen, Finnish documentary director, and journalist Kevin Frazier decides to do. With a quote from the web site of the film, this is what it is about:

”Why are some of the world’s biggest international companies translating the Ruhnama, an absurd government propaganda book from Turkmenistan, into their own languages?

The film exposes the immorality of international companies doing business with the dictatorship of oil-and-gas-rich Turkmenistan, thus helping to hide its human rights and free speech abuses – all in the name of profit and corporate greed.”

The list of greedy companies you can find on http://www.shadowoftheholybook.com/

So far, so good, the problem is that these companies (of course) in general resist to take part in the film, so a huge part of the visual narrative consists of Frazier and Halonen in and out of hotel rooms, on the phone, trying to get someone to expose their bad ethics of making profits.

It happens, not completely but the filmmakers succeed to get some people regret. As the director has asked me: how many documentaries do actually change something? Bravo for that persistence and courage.

Otherwise, in the film you see some exiled politicians tell their stories, rather predictable, and the film team has set up some interesting reconstructions and shot some footage from the country. It is indeed sometimes absurd entertainment but I dont feel it is enough to keep attention in a 90 minutes long film. Arto Halonen has made better films than this recording of a relatively unsuccesful investigative journalism.

Finland, 2007, 90 mins.

http://www.artfilmsproduction.com/englishpages.html

World Sales: http://www.filmstransit.com/