Another strong story from the Iraqi war. This time about a journalist, Yunis Abbas, who was captured by the Americans accused for being part of a cell that planned to kill Tony Blair when he was to visit his war zone. Yunis Abbas tells the story himself through a long interview. He speaks clearly, he tells the story straight forward to give the time development of the film. Him being captured together with his brothers, followed by detainment, finally to end up in the worst part of the Abu Ghraib prison.

With a release after nine months accompanied by a “sorry”, “we don’t know why you are here”!

The filmmakers have wisely chosen a tone of the film that stresses the more than absurd story that Yunis Abbas tells. They use light pop music, they intercut his story with cartoon-like drawings that brings in humour, they aim at an ironical tone but does not refrain from being pathetic in sequences that illustrate the horror of the war. A camera is following the capture of the Abbas family, demonstrating the respectless behaviour of the American soldiers. (Later on the prisoners are called monkeys). I wonder where they got the material from.

An American soldier tells the story from his perspective. He got friends with the brothers, he is a good boy and the prisoners are greatful to what he did for them.

In that way the film demonstrates nuances, it’s not only Good and Bad, it also brings in a universal element – this could happen everywhere, in every war. We knew it happened in Aby Ghraib, this time we are reminded about it, in a good film that has taken a good choice of storytelling.

The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
Germany, USA, 2006

More about the festival: http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

“This is the director’s point of view on Jacques Vergès which may differ from the opinions of people interviewed in the film”. These words are to be found on screen at the start of this fascinating film about a man, who during his whole life as an advocate has defended and had connections to criminals like Barbie, RAF people, Carlos – and who is up to take the case of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge comrade Khieu Sampran.

Well, what the director’s view really is stays a bit unclear to me but what stands out is the focus on a charismatic adventurer Jacques Vergès, who sits behind his enormous desk, constantly with a wonderful cuban cigar in his hand, a man who has enjoyed a life as a star advocate with a very simple anti-american political agenda. This is declared from the very beginning with a clip of Pol Pot who quotes a book by Vergès. In this he describes Pol Pot, the mass murderer, as a smiling and gentle person. Cut from Pol Pot to Vergès who puts forward his doubts about the numbers of people killed by the regime of Pol Pot and says that what the Americans did was much worse. His words accompany the images from the killing fields in Cambodia.

Yes, in this sequence the point of view is clear.

Barbet Schroeder tells his story through an excellent mix of archive, interviews with a lot of people who have worked with or been friends with Vergès, and with some of the terrorists now out of prison. Like Magdalena Kopp, Rote Armee Fraktion, the lover of Carlos and Vergès?

For me, however, the most interesting part of this tour-de-force of pre-9/11 world terrorist history is the long early start of the film where French politics in Algiers is the subject. Vergès was involved in the fight for freedom for the Algerians and married the female hero of the fight, Djamila Bouhired, who is portrayed in the film “The battle of Algiers” by Pontecorvo. Clips from this film, great archive material and interviews revive the French massacres and the answers from Algerian side.

The film is more than two hours long but you feel informed, sometimes angered and admittedly entertained by this elegant mysterious character who gives you no more information than he wants to.

Barbet Schroeder: Terror’s Advocate. France, 2007

More about the festival: http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

One of those films that are hard to watch. A beautiful young girl falls ill and turns into an aggressive young woman full of aggression to end up as a plump adult full of medication that can calm her down, desperate to get her sister’s attention, in her own world of fantasy and puppets from her childhood.

The sister, the Maurice Pialat actress Sandrine Bonnaire, has made this film based on shootings of today plus the home video archive she has from 25 years of togetherness with a sister that suddenly changed, fell ill and was traumatised by 5 years of non-treatment at a hospital. The place she was taken to when Sandrine no longer would or could cope with taking care of her. Neither could other family members.

It is touching and the film star sister must be saluted for staying as the sister and nothing else, stating however that without her using her fame to get financing for the set up of an institution for her sister and other mentally handicapped human beings, Sabine would have been a monster in a hospital.

Again you are reminded through this film how powerful home video (archive) material can function as evidence of what was once and is no longer.

Sandrine Bonnaire: Elle s’appelle Sabine. France, 2007.

More about the festival: http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

 

 

 

Things are moving in the documentary genre. New and original ways of storytelling come out of the blue. Like in this case where British director Brian Hill went to the Downview Prison in Sutton England to make a film with and about the female prisoners.

He hired a composer and a songwriter to make human and compassionate those often very tough and tragic stories that got the women into prison. The prisoners themselves sing their stories, which makes the storytelling dynamic and deep and warm. It’s pure Verfremdungseffekt, Brecht would have loved it.

It ends up being a documusical, quite extraordinary. You are totally taken by the women and their stories about burglary and drug smuggling – nevertheless the strongest story is the one with a non-singing inmate, who happened to kill a woman, a neighbour that she wanted to threaten with a knife because of constant partying and noise from the neighbour’s side. She sort of walked into the knife…

Brian Hill: Songbirds. UK, 2005

More about the festival: http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso

 

It’s countryside again. This time Nicholas Philibert heads for Normandy, where he 30 years ago was the direction assistant of René Allio on the film “Moi, Pierre Rivière”, a “based on a true” story about a young man who in 1835 killed his mother, sister and brother. Pierre left his memoirs that were studied and written about by French philosopher Michel Foucault – the inspiration for Allio.

Philibert goes back to see the people, who played the roles in the film. Allio wanted people from the region, so called real people, and Philibert was to find them. As he re-finds them now due to his absolutely masterly discreet, warm and interested way of making them feel confident in front of the camera.

I can not think of any European documentarist who has this sense of making beauty out of everyday life as it is being lived by us ordinary people.

What we as an audience get is therefore a multi-layered documentary essay, a reflection on Life and Death as it was interpreted so stylistically perfect in the film of René Allio, from which we see a lot of excerpts AND as it is performed and told about by the people in this countryside today.

Of course there is also a lot of wonderful film memories that are brought forward by those, who played the mother, the father, the sister, the lover – and the son, who has left the region but is found by Philibert and enters the film in the end.

A completely different film from the hands of the man behind “Etre et Avoir”, and yet it is with the same signature, from a director who believes in the image and in looking at life as a gift to be cared about.

Nicholas Philibert: Back to Normandy. France, 2007

More about the festival: http://www.cphdox.dk/d1/front.lasso