Thomas Balmés: Happiness

ZagrebDox places the film in the ”Happy Dox” category. Here is some background on theme and on story from the idfa catalogue synopsis 2013: Bhutan is one of the least developed countries in the world. There is barely any industry, and electricity was not commonplace until very recently. This meant that people led their lives without TV, let alone Internet. But both arrived at last in 1999, following an official announcement by King Jigme Singye Wangchuk. The advent of electricity was revolutionary for the tiny mountainside villages in this Himalayan kingdom. Peyangki is a dreamy and solitary eight-year-old monk who lives in the last village to get hooked up. In anticipation of this big event, Peyangki’s uncle decides to buy a TV set, which will take a three-day journey to Bhutan’s capital of Thimpu. Peyangki will go along on the trip, his first foray into the big city. “Do you expect TV to make you happy?” asks the lama of the last five monks at Peyangki’s monestery. The answer is a resounding “Yes.”…

“Happiness” is beautifully shot, the boy is brilliant and convincing as is his mother, with whom he has many wonderful scenes, it is here that the film lives, whereas the story about the tv, that breaks so the uncle has to go to the city to buy a new one, feels fake and too arranged, and does thus not really work in this scripted documentary, that makes you smile, think of Sergey Dvortsevoy without Balmés having his rough poetic touch, it is much more smooth in style, and the ending of the film with a sequence of faces looking at us viewers/Westeners is far too much in its “moralistic” message: What are we doing to the people, who had a natural and harmonious life far away from “our” world. This is how I read it. What a pity for a film that could live without such finger-pointing… respect the audience, please.

France/Finland, 2013, 80 mins.

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=d40497b2-f646-4a70-9a1d-330bbce58e06#sthash.5G0KOVKN.dpuf

http://zagrebdox.net/en/2014/home

Damir Cucic

Croatian director (b.1972) Damir Cucic “opened” my 2014 ZagrebDox screening schedule, and thanks for that. The festival had very rightly arranged a small retrospective of the work of a director, who deserves much more international attention that he gets at the moment, for his original approach and personal documentary film language. Let me highlight two of the films in the four-titled programme: “La Strada” (2004) (photo) and “The Forgotten” (2002). 

Vodnjan is the location of the 29 mins. long observation of people and life in a town close to the sea and Italy. The film is episodic, it conveys the impressions of its director in a beautiful rythmic way. You are taken to a Southern European mood, where children are playing in the looong street (“La Strada”), men are hanging out with a beer in hand, old people sit in their plastic chairs looking at the young women passing by, it is all very summerly and inviting, many languages, old couples discussing what was good in the past and today, faces, small situations – great great camerawork, unconventional editing.

“The Forgotten” (35 mins.) takes you to the countryside, to a village, Zumberak, which is at the border of Croatia and Slovenia. Again the cameraman Boris Poljak and the composer Goran Strbac (as in “La Strada”) together with the director/editor Cucic break the rules of dramaturgy, taking the viewer away from the main circling structure around people and the environment, stopping at other moments, where snow is melting into drops of water from the trees, a small symphony one could say, a film “within” the film,

true poetry. And sometimes, with the music/the sound design, you sense a kind of “jamming”, putting the images together with the sound into a composition that stresses that here is a filmmaker, who goes from description to interpretation in exceptional sequences. What a beauty, I wrote in the dark of the cinema, and I wrote “a Croatian Audrius Stonys”, a master, who, he told me afterwards, is (like Lithuanian Stonys) influenced by Artavadz Pelisjan (“Seasons”). And I repeat myself – there are too few poets in documentary cinema. Damir Cucic is one.

And then back to the festival and its message on the internet:  “On Monday, 24 February, in the evening, we received a letter from producer Siniša Juričić, notifying us that under the threat of a lawsuit he is forced to withdraw the film “Mitch – The Diary of a Schizophrenic” directed by Damir Čučić. From the very beginning, ZagrebDox has been strongly focused on the wish to initiate dialogues, be a platform for the screening of diverse documentaries, confronting ideas, aesthetics and ideologies, a place of encounter for filmmakers, protagonists, audience and critics. Therefore, without entering the (legal) nature, the festival management express their regret that these acclaimed and multiple award-winning filmmakers – Damir Čučić and Siniša Juričić – were denied this chance.”

http://zagrebdox.net/en/2014/home

Pitching at ZagrebDox – Memories

ZagrebDox 2014 is running. I have watched several films, reviews and reports will follow. Here are some memories which are published in the catalogue of the festival. A look back to the first edition of ZagrebDox Pro:

In 2005 ZagrebDox started. And today it is a very well established and functioning documentary event, respected among professionals all over Europe and (most important) with quite a strong audience attendance. It has a regional Competition, an international competition, side programmes, retrospectives, debates, you name it…

The man in the middle, the founder of it all, Nenad Puhovski, asked me for advice and help, when he started the festival. He wanted to establish a pitching forum like the ones we had been organising for almost a decade at the EDN (European Documentary Network), where I was the director and Nenad member of the Executive Committee. The first year, 2005, it was more a kind of workshop, where 14 projects were brought for development discussions with knowledgeable people like Sabine Bubeck from ZDF/arte, the distributor and producer Heino Deckert, Rada Sesic from the idfa Jan Vrijman Fund – and Nenad, Cecilia Lidin, my colleague from EDN and me.Among the 14 filmmakers were names like Macedonian Atanas Georgiev, Sinisa Juricic from Croatia, the Serbians Zeljko Mirkovic and Boris Mitic, Assen Vladimirov from Bulgaria. All of them now well known names internationally, who have pitched their way to co-productions and/or support from broadcasters and funds.

The 2005 opening of the festival was great for me, not only because of the workshop but also because Nenad had asked me to a member of the jury – that has to watch all international AND regional films. I was with idfa’s Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen and local master Krsto Papić. We did not have time to watch all the films in the theatre, so Adriek and I were running down the corridor of our hotel to exchange vhs tapes of the films. Pioneer times!

Pitching… I asked Nenad to refresh my memory for this introduction…

article to the retrospective of pitched projects that became films after Zagreb and many other pitching events, and he sent me an article from the catalogue, where he describes the times, when he started his career ” when “getting” a documentary film was relatively easy”, through conversations and the result was that these “humane, relaxed and creative contact with an editor or a dramatist resulted in some of the best Croatian documentaries of that time…”

Nenad and I are from same great (!) generation, now grandfathers, and I remember the same situation from the other side of the table, as film consultant at the Film Board of Denmark. Yes, it was conversations, coffee and cigarettes, some paper work (from half apage to let’s say 10), ok here is the money, full financing, and good films were made.

So, the question comes up: Do all the pitching sessions, the trailers/pilots, the paper work, the financing plans, the rough cut showings etc. – do they produce better films at the end of the day?

And now you get a real Danish answer: Maybe! Honestly, I think that with the pitching itself (the 7 minutes including visuals + the 7 minutes discussion) it is impossible to convey what you want to do, BUT you can raise interest for further coffe conversations (no tobacco, smoking is disappearing, I am afraid), contacts, budget strategies so you get money from the MEDIA Programme etc. AND in many cases you see good films being produced with a director from one country, a cameraman from another, an editor from a third…Creativity has no borders. And through pitching sessions and other market events a new generation of producers, who know how to move internationally, has come up. And first of all, it is for bigger budget films a necessity to go and sell your film project.

Look at the titles of films that passed by ZagrebDox to be discussed as projects and pitched. There are more that could have been picked, but the 7 chosen are films with high quality, some with strong international support, some with local/regional.

“Cash and Marry” (photo), I was at ZagrebDox for the premiere, there was a crazy and wonderful atmosphere in the hall at the University Campus. “The Caviar Connection”, I remember my nervousness on their behalf when Dragan and Jovana Nikolic pitched at idfa Amsterdam, they became the stars of that year. “Cinema Komunisto”, well the film runs in cinema in Paris… I have brilliant memories from many good years at the festival and I am happy to see that ZagrebDoxPro still exists, in a much bigger version now, and well handled by two other EDN persons: Leena Pasanen and Stefano Tealdi.

 

The Flaherty Celebrates its 60th Year

For new readers: “The Flaherty is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the proposition that independent media can illuminate the human spirit. Its mission is to foster exploration, dialogue, and introspection about the art and craft of all forms of the moving image. It was established to present the annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, named after the maker of such seminal documentaries as Nanook of the North, Man of Aran, and Louisiana Story. The Seminar remains the central and defining activity of The Flaherty…”

But there are many other events going on around the year. I have to confess that my knowledge of The Flaherty was pretty limited until former colleague from EDN, Anita Reher, crossed the Atlantic and took over as Executive Director – and got me on the list for receiving the informative newsletter of the organisation.

Yes, 60 years, and the Ex. Director has asked for memories. In the February newsletter Dorothy O. Olson , who programmed the second seminar together with the widow of Robert, Frances, looks back. She remembers three films, that she writes passionately about: Satyajit Ray’s Pater Panchali, (photo) shown in 1961 in Puerto Rico on 35mm:

“Now try to imagine our improvised screening facilities: during daylight hours the dining room, with one long wall of glass, was darkened by black curtains that blocked light. These were removed at night so the windows could be opened.”

The two other films she brings up are Marcel Ophuls “The Sorrow and the Pity” (shown in 1971) and Jennifer Fox “Beirut: The Last Home Movie” (1988). But it is not only wonderful film history …

tonight The Flaherty has a surprise party in Boston, USA. Read about it:

“Experience what it means to sit in a theater without any preconceived notions of what you’re about to see and discover cinema as it’s meant to be seen. Join Flaherty Executive Director, Anita Reher along with Flaherty Board of Trustees members Elizabeth Delude-Dix, Lorna Lowe and former trustee John Gianvito for an evening of screening and discussion at The DocYard. In the spirit of the Flaherty tradition, the program of the evening will be not be revealed until it is projected on the screen. It’s an opportunity to participate in this unique experience that is the Flaherty, where you are urged to arrive with an open mind and without any preconceptions.

Join us for an evening of screening and discussion. Selections from past Robert Flaherty Film Seminars and Flaherty NYC Series will be screened followed by a conversation on non-fiction film. Explore the creative process of contemporary filmmakers and artists who are expanding the boundaries of documentary filmmaking. Their films will make you laugh, think, and cry.

As always, the conversation will continue over refreshments.”

No announcement of the film programme, what an interesting and courageous format, never met that in 40 years documentary screenings in Europe! Never dared to do the same!

http://www.flahertyseminar.org

Ukraine & Docudays

There you sit in your comfortable armchair. You watch, you listen, you read about Ukraine, feeling shocked and hopeless… December seems far away, at that time I posted a text about the Docudays festival people taking active part in the events on Maidan in Kiev (photo). This is what they wrote before a screening took place in the square:

”Docudays UA is an apolitical festival. But it is about human rights and the choice each one of us always has: to accept the dictatorship regime or to fight for the victory of democracy. The future of Ukraine depends on the choice each one of us has to make. That is why Docudays UA is with Maidan!”.

To say the least the events in Maidan have taken quite a different direction. More than 80 protesters have been killed. Nervously about the DocuDays people, I wrote and got an email answer from one of the dear friends from the festival yesterday: ”It’s tragic time here: we can’t believe how many beautiful people died for new country. And it’s happy time here: we feel, that now we are absolutely new nation: strong and brave…”

The festival people have their office close to Maidan. It serves as a shelter for friends, foreign journalists, film-makers, activists – and for preparing the upcoming DocuDays March 21-28. What an energy and dedication! Respect and hugs, wishing them all the best!

To read about the latest developments, the DocuDays people recommend

http://en.pravda.com.ua/

http://www.docudays.org.ua/eng/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2576/

Marathon Dok 2014

… arranged by EDN (European Documentary Network) in Copenhagen, read more from the website:

”Marathon Dok is a looooong day full of funny, fascinating and fantastic documentaries. This one-day screening program brings new international high quality documentaries to the big screen in the beautiful cinema of the Danish Film School. The screenings start at 14:00 and end at 22:00…”

The programme is chaptered with fours blocks and EDN deserves much applause for showing  short documentaries that we (at least I) tend to skip when setting up our festival schedule, and with television, forget it, very few channels show short films.

Anyway, there are two films of high quality that you get the chance to watch if you are Copenhagen or – Malmö-based: the masterly done, shocking ”Return to Homs” (photo) by Talal Derki and Thomas Balmès ”Happiness”.

March 1, 2014. From 14:00 to 22:00. Theodor Christensens Plads 1, Filmskolen, Copenhagen, Denmark

http://www.edn.dk/activities/edn-activities-2014/marathon-dok-2014/

Bartosz M. Kowalski: A Dream in the Making

Always dedicated Hanka Kastelicová, executive producer of documentaries at HBO Europe, handed me the dvd of the director Kowalski, who with his first documentary work has made one of those many Polish documentaries that shine of professionalism in camerawork, editing and use of music. This time also of the director’s ability to get close to his two main characters, Pawel and Bartek (photo), to convey their friendship and hope for the future in a social and mentally devastated environment in a district of Warsaw.

In cold bluish exterior colours the film paints the picture of the area in which the two move around. Pawel, who is a bit older than Bartek, trying to help the latter to achieve what he did not manage to do in his young life. Bartek enters a school for stunt men, the film follows his development and his many physical efforts to become good in that, helped by Pawel in rooms in ruined houses where they can train. Pawel, married, outlines what is important for him and many others in similar social situations: family and Legia (football club in Warsaw). He seems like he wants to have a father role towards Bartek, who grew up in an orphanage and not with his alchoholic parents. Bartek is the one who tells the story in this very tense and talented HBO production (yes, you sense the channel’s wish to have an action-led narrative) about a world (Bartek’s words) that is a ”fucking shitty mess”.

It seems hopeless, but the director lets Bartek turn to the audience in the closing sequence with a smile that communicates that he will make it!

Poland, HBO, 50 mins.

http://culture.pl/en/work/a-dream-in-the-making-bartosz-m-kowalski

ZagrebDox 2014

Sunday 23rd of February ZagrebDox International Documentary Festival takes off for the 10th time in the Croatian capital – in the Cineplexx, Centar Kapitol cinemas. I have been to the festival several times, from the first edition as a juror, later on as programmer of a Baltic doc retrospective and several times as part of the team of ZagrebDox Pro, the training and pitching event, where new projects are presented. Nenad Puhovski, the founder of it all, film producer/director/professor, asked me for this 10th edition to put together a programme of films that were pitched at the ”Pro”, I did so with pleasure having the chance to remember titles like ”Cinema Komunisto” (Mila Turajlic), ”Caviar Connection” (Dragan Nikolic), ”Cash and Marry” (Atanas Georgiev), ”Bird’s Way (Klara Trencsényi) and “Sevdah” (Marina Andrée Skop). Not to forget “The Cycles” (Vladimir Gojun) and “Orchestra” (Pjer Zalica). I have to say that with these films, that all have a strong creative strength, and with all the other films that I have seen during the years in Zagreb, I have learnt a lot about the region, its current status and Yugoslavia.

Nenad Puhovski, same age as me, all right to be precise, he is 2 years younger, has made a programme that will not only appeal to our generation. I am sure there will full houses for a lot of the almost 150 films to be screened. I have seen many of them but going through the titles I marked 23 that I want to see when down there – I know from experience that this will not happen but as many as possible! One of them is “Twenty Feet from Stardom” (Morgan Neville), Oscar nominated, and the one of the five I had not seen before. The festival offers its audience to watch this one and two more (“Cutie and the Boxer”, “Dirty Wars”), “The Act of Killing” was at the festival last year. Only one missing is “The Square”.

A bit more title-dropping: In the international competition you will find the Lozinski films, “Father and Son” (by the son Pawel) and “Father and Son on a Journey” (by the father Marcel), Giedre Beinoriute’s “Conversations on Serious Topics”, “Return to Homs” by Talal Derki, the amazing short by Swedish Ida Lindgren “Rings of Life”, “Stories We Tell” by Sarah Polley and “The Last Station” by Cristian Soto and Catalina Vergara. And in the regional competition go and watch “Life is almost Wonderful” by Svetoslav Draganov, the original “Velvet terrorists” by Peter Kerekes, Pavel Pekarcik and Ivan Ostrochovsky, “The Last Black Sea Pirates” by Svetoslav Stoyanov, all good films that I have seen already, whereas I am really looking forward to watch Damir Cucic “Mitch – Diary of a Schizophrenic” (photo), produced by Sinisa Juricic. I have high expectations.

Have to stop here, take a look at the website, it is going to be a fest!

Links to (some of) the films mentioned:

Cinema Komunisto: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1346/

Caviar Connection: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/718/

Cash and Marry: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/703/

Bird’s Way: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1056/

Sevdah: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/829/

Cutie and the Boxer: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2606/

Dirty Wars: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2607/

Father and son: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/1536/

Conversations on Serious Topics: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2337/

Return to Homs: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2615/

Stories We Tell: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2341/

Velvet Terrorists: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2418/

The Last Black Sea Pirates: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2432/

http://zagrebdox.net/en

Sara Ishaq: Kamara has No Walls

Before Scottish/Yemenite Sara Ishaq directed the personal, wonderful “The Mulberry House”, she made this 26 mins. long documentary that is nominated for an Oscar in the Documentary Short Subject category. It is extremely tough and shocking to watch because the director, in this her first documentary, brings reportage footage shot by courageous cameramen Nasr Al-Namir and Khaled Rajeh in the streets of San’a in Yemen, and in the hospitals where dead and dying victims are brought in, into a context, where the two cameramen are interviewed looking back on what happened, as well as the fathers to a dead young man and a boy who got blinded by the bullets from the regime’s soldiers. Here is the synopsis of the film from the website of the film, link below:

Through the lenses of two cameramen and the accounts of two fathers, Karama Has No Walls encapsulates the tragic events of a day that changed the course of Yemen’s 2011 revolution (Friday of Karama [Dignity], March 18th 2011). The film retells the story of the tragic events of the day as they unfolded, from a peaceful prayer gathering to a barrage of bullets.

By changing the reportage material into a creative documentary with a human perspective, including people who were there filming or who came there to find out whether their loved one was one of the victims… you are watching a film, an interpretation of what happened on the square Karma, that means dignity! It’s as simple as that but it takes a clever filmmaker to get there. Read what she has written on the website of the film: 

“The strongest motive that led to the making of “Karama has no walls” movie was meeting young Saleem Al-Harazi, during Yemen’s 2011 revolution, who

had been blinded during the Friday of Dignity attack. Following this encounter, I met the father of martyr Anwar Al-Muati, Abdul-Wahed, who I’d met by chance while working on a BBC piece about the revolution. It shook me how little I and everyone else knew about the actual attacks that took place on the day, and even less about the victims and their families whose lives were irreparably shattered. Most people I talked to about the event at the time seemed to have no clear idea of what actually happened or who was responsible. The subject fell pray to a systematic media blackout. My personal experience at the Square, and of the protestors, gave me insight into how events unfolded as well as what the human cost was, however, no matter how loudly I tried to shout from the rooftops to draw attention to the matter, it seemed my voice fell on deaf ears and a film, that contextualised and humanised the subject, seemed to be the only solution.

While collaborating with other cameramen and activists in the Square, we came across footage of the attacks on YouTube, and this subsequently led us to meet and befriend the cameramen involved in capturing the incredible footage of the attacks. What they showed me when I met them in person left me shocked, and I realised that merely sending the footage to TV channels would reduce the images to routine and forgettable news items which would not impact viewers in the way that I was impacted having spoken to the cameramen and victims. Meeting the cameramen and realising the degree of risk they took in order to document such violations of human rights, was the biggest motivation for me to try my best to publicise their incredibly brave work.

The difficult process of making the film with no money and minimal help made me realise that if this film was possible, equipped only with commitment and the indispensible support of people around us, then any other film would be possible too. It has given my team and myself the motivation to persevere with future films, despite the often long, arduous and laborious process of filmmaking, from inception until release, with no guarantee for good results or a positive reception by its viewers. In the end, seeing an audience respond positively to our efforts, as was the case with Karama Has No Walls , is really what gives us the much-needed encouragement to continue. Personally, this has given me a stronger sense of responsibility to make films that matter and to continue to work towards raising awareness about important human-interest stories (mainly in Yemen), which are typically unexplored by mainstream media…”

And for us who know so little about Yemen, but now considerably more, some background material: The protests in Sana’a began in February 2011, following the fall of Mubarak in Egypt, with a group of youth setting down a row of tents outside their university gates, vowing not to return home until their demands were met. This ever-expanding tent-city became the hub of hope and inspiration for thousands of Yemeni people and was dubbed ‘Change Square’. Within weeks, it became the arena where members of a heavily armed population set aside their weapons and peacefully assembled to demand the fall of (former) president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year autocratic rule. For the first time in over 30 years, the barrier of fear was broken. Men and women, city-dwellers and tribesmen, rich and poor, young and old, all stood together, equal and resolute in the face of adversity.

UK/Yemen, 2012, 26 mins.

http://karamahasnowalls.com/

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

 

Christopher Olgiati: Mad Dog

Den medvirkende på dette still hedder Ali Aujali, og han har som libysk topdiplomat arbejdet tæt på Gaddafi i fyrre år. Han gik over til oprørerne 2011 og blev deres første ambassadør i Washington. Aujali er hovedvidne i Olgiatis film ”Mad Dog”, som DR Dokumania sender på tirsdag 18. februar kl. 21. Den skal selvfølgelig ses, den kommer fra Nick Frasers ”Storyville” på BBC Four, det er i sig selv grund nok. Og en mand, som har arbejdet sammen med den forfærdende libyske leder i fire årtier, skal man da høre på. Jeg skal selv se og høre igen, for jeg er i første omgang skuffet og forvirret. Hvad er det her for noget?

Undertitlen er ”Gaddafi’s Secret World”, og den titel lover, hvad filmen er, en journalistisk afslørende skildring. Altså ikke et portræt af manden, ikke en biografi, ikke en analyse af hans politik og slet ikke en beskrivelse af den magtkonstellation, som bragte ham til lederposten ved et kup, den konstellation, som holdt ham på lederposten og ikke en analyse af rokeringerne i den, selv om der da må have været en del. Nej, det har ikke fristet Olgiati, det er mandens hemmelige liv, hans voksende sindssyge, som hans film holder et i mange momenter særdeles nyfigent fokus på. Det er en mærkelig film, mærkelig, fordi den, som jeg ser den, er uden kerne af indsigt. Jeg kan nemlig ikke tro, at skildringen af en mulig sindssyge i vækst er værkets inderste erfaring. Men hovedtitlen tyder jo på det.

Jeg har en mulig forklaring på min desorientering. Jeg er påvirket af en anden BBC film, en underholdningsfortælling, som sammenstiller en dag i Stalins liv, en dag i Idi Amins liv og altså en dag i Gaddafis liv. Jeg så den for nogen tid siden. Den har en del af det samme arkivstof, mener jeg, er ellers lavet som spillefilm. Og den er på alle måder ubehagelig i sin smagende stilisering, synes jeg. Den film kommer jeg hele tiden til at tænke på, og det forstyrrer mig i koncentrationen om Olgiatis arbejde, fordi jeg har så svært ved at se, hvad han egentlig selv vil lægge til. Så ”Mad Dog” bliver for mig en skrækkelig film, en række gentagelser og gennem utroværdige vidner en række overflødige bekræftelser af en række allerede beviste kendsgerninger og kendte rygter i flæng. Det er – bortset fra de grusomme detaljer, hvor jeg må lukke øjnene og skrue ned for lyden – en triviel fortælling, en ulidelig gentagelse af den vulgærpsykologiske almindelighed, at bare skyder et helt regimes ufattelige brutalitet og utallige forbrydelser ind under en diktators, en enkelt persons sygdomsramte sind. Det trods kendsgerningen, at gennem fyrre år har manden på fotoet medvirket og utallige med ham. De har regeret med en stor del af befolkningens støtte og under dens begejstrede tilråb.

Altså ondskab simpelt hen hos mange, manglende viden hos de fleste som manglende viden hos præsidenten selv.

”Mad Dog” er delt ind i en række afsnit med overskrifter, fint nok, men jeg får alligevel ikke overblikket, oplever ingen udvikling i historien, i filmens argumentation. Imidlertid er der – og det er vigtigt, og der ligger mit håb om at forstå – en gennemgående speak, som jeg burde have været mere opmærksom på. Det vil jeg være på tirsdag. Og så desuden lytte ekstra opmærksomt til manden på billedet.

UK 2014, 85 min.

Link: bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa

Link: bbc.co.uk/programmes/