It is always, I suppose, instructive to be reminded of the cruelty humans are capable of. though I am not sure I needed reminding. I am living through the Palestinian genocide in real time. Boko Haram is active in my country. I grew up on Al Jazeera where there are always people dying somewhere in the Middle East or across Africa, and after a while you become numb to it because it is just numbers on a screen that your brain learns to process without feeling.
what film does differently is put faces to it. there is a scene where the camera is right up against their faces and you cannot look away and you cannot make it abstract. that is what cinema can do that the news cannot, it refuses to let you be numb. It insists that you see.
I knew the Bosnian war only vaguely, through fragments picked up elsewhere, and this filled in something I had not fully understood before. but what triggered me most was the UN. I already had little faith in that institution watching what it has failed to do in Gaza, and this film confirmed every suspicion. their hands are tied at every turn. they cannot cross this line, cannot violate that protocol, cannot act without authorization from somewhere above them. people are being massacred within sight of their compounds and they are filing paperwork. I genuinely do not understand what they are for.
It is always, I suppose, instructive to be reminded of the cruelty humans are capable of. though I am not sure I needed reminding. I am living through the Palestinian genocide in real time. Boko Haram is active in my country. I grew up on Al Jazeera where there are always people dying somewhere in the Middle East or across Africa, and after a while you become numb to it because it is just numbers on a screen that your brain learns to process without feeling.
what film does differently is put faces to it. there is a scene where the camera is right up against their faces and you cannot look away and you cannot make it abstract. that is what cinema can do that the news cannot, it refuses to let you be numb. It insists that you see.
I knew the Bosnian war only vaguely, through fragments picked up elsewhere, and this filled in something I had not fully understood before. but what triggered me most was the UN. I already had little faith in that institution watching what it has failed to do in Gaza, and this film confirmed every suspicion. their hands are tied at every turn. they cannot cross this line, cannot violate that protocol, cannot act without authorization from somewhere above them. people are being massacred within sight of their compounds and they are filing paperwork. I genuinely do not understand what they are for.
