In the first few press preview screenings and festival showcases, no film affected me as much at A Perfect Day (Spain), a light comedy starring Benicio Del Toro and Tim Robbins as relief workers in the Balkans. Described in program notes as “MASH-like,” this oft-comical drama about war-torn former Yugoslavia two decades ago shows how it’s not the guys with guns who are most often victimized in war but innocent noncombatants — mostly women, children and men without guns.
Yet amid the chaos, the madness, the violence, is the human spirit of citizens determined to survive no matter what thanks to well-intentioned international relief workers who do their best to assist them despite bureaucrats and others who get in their way.
As a former Pacific News Service correspondent who covered the Iraq-Iran War, the first Palestinian intifada (with Michael Moore), the South African invasion of Angola, strife in Colombia’s “Red Zone” and other flashpoints, viewing A Perfect Day was déjà vu.
Motley’s Law (Denmark) reminded this former conflict journalist of how little things have changed in the Middle East. It’s a compelling documentary directed by Nicole Horanyi about biracial (black/Korean) attorney Kimberly Motley who is the only Western foreigner allowed to litigate in Afghanistan. She’s a street-savvy, former Miss Wisconsin, who today uses her brilliant legal skills to defend an array of people, ranging from women prisoners who refused to be raped to South African mercenaries convicted of selling narcotics.
This tough attorney has been threatened with death via phone calls and at least one hand grenade tossed inside her Kabul home. Luckily, it did not explode. She originally left her husband and children for a one-year stint to help the family pay bills. That was seven years ago. She’s still in Kabul fighting for defendants’ rights in a country she alleged “has taken $60 billion of U.S. money that is unaccounted for according to the special inspector to the government of Afghanistan.”
I was very moved by both director Natalia Bruschtien and her Tempo Suspendido (Argentina), which centers on her activist grandmother Laura Bonaparte’s memory of how her children were disappeared by Argentina’s military dictatorship of the ’70s. Bonaparte, who founded the famous human rights group The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, which accelerated regime change, shed light on the 25,000 Argentineans who were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the Fascists.
“If you lose your memory, you lose your identity,” Bruschtien replied when I asked her why she thinks stories like this can change the world.
Other noteworthy films were Adama (France), directed by Simon Rouby, a cartoon odyssey about a young boy who goes outside his West African village a century ago to find his older brother, and Cronies (U.S.), directed by Michael Larnell, about a dysfunctional family (black and white film, produced by Spike Lee).
There was a huge black perspective tribute to Charles Burnett, director of the 1980 sleeper classic, To Sleep With Anger, about an African-American family’s turmoil in South Central Los Angeles.
Oak Parker Bruce Sheridan, chair of Columbia College’s Cinema Art and Science Department, was a panelist on “How to Build a Booming Chicago Film Industry” Friday, Oct. 23 at AMC.
And the icing on the cake was Michael Moore’s new Where Do I Invade Next? a satirical documentary about how European, African and Pacific nations are achieving more important democratic social reforms than the U.S. Ironically, said Moore, “These reforms began in North America.”
In 1986, my first tour of duty as a war correspondent was traveling with Moore and others to Kuwait, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Israel/Palestine. He was provocative then and now. I’m guessing Moore took time out from interviews to catch Degrade (Palestine/France), which takes the viewer to a beauty salon in Gaza Strip — a place Moore and I reported from in 1986. This dramatic film with comedic notes is directed by Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser.
This year’s fest is a global feast.