From the Bafici, criticism of "Iraqi short films"

Iraqi

Yesterday was the second screening of the film «Iraqi Short Films«, A 90-minute film, divided into two parts according to the particular theme that is worked on in each half. The film has been made by an Argentine director, called Mauro andrizzi. It is a film that, as the director said when presenting his film, is ending its journey at the Independent Film Festival of his country, since it has already visited various European and Latin festivals last year.

And much stood out throughout the world, for being the first film made with documentary images found and compiled over four months by Andrizzi, taken from Internet sites, and originals by both sides of the war in Iraq. It was the same soldiers, both American and Iraqi, who captured the images that make up this film, having been retouched by the director, of course, in order to give a sense and a clear point of view to the sequences achieved, adding music that locates and contextualizes in a more than virtuous way each one of the images that are observed throughout the film.

Atrocious cruelty is what can be seen throughout the hour and a half that the film lasts, not being recreated scenes of what a war could or could be. Rather, they are images captured by their own protagonists, showing us fragments where unexpected explosions, violent deaths, and two very antagonistic ways of seeing the war, lead us through a historical journey of what, even today, can be experienced in the Middle East , albeit on a smaller scale.

Andrizzi spoke about the film, and presented his work as his own need to speak out against the injustices he observed in the warlike situation that until recently took place in Iraq. And he also highlighted the great differences that he could find between the American and Iraqi images. And it is that in the seconds, there is an incredible handling of suspense, being that the soldiers remain hidden and waiting, since they have their attacks and defenses very well calculated. They handle themselves with patience, and with a very deep love for Allah (they constantly repeat «Allah is great«). In his radicalism, which the filmmaker said he did not share, the Iraqi soldiers give their lives for the protection of their land and their rights, and that is what most motivated Andrizzi from there. On the other hand, the American soldiers show, in their images, a constant improvisation in their attack modes, more than the defensive ones. They never know where a bomb, a bullet, a surprise attack of any kind is going to come from. At the same time they are more mocking in their achievements. And it is that in the first part of the film you can see a «video clip»Performed by US soldiers in one of their settlements, where one of them trotted through the different spaces of the site, led by a camera, and music played in the background. And what is peculiar, beyond this, is its relationship with reality and with religion. Since, contrary to what the Iraqi soldiers constantly pronounce, and are grateful for, the US soldiers pray to God to please get them out of that country alive, out of that war. Their constantly present moans are more like a request for help, as if they felt they were the protagonists of a true Hollywood horror movie.

But what the director wanted to highlight the most when talking about his film was the fact that, although it is not very present in images, what means the most in the film is the out of field, constantly present in the consciousness of the spectator, that there is a society, there is a people, there is innocents around that bloody war that develops without truce, without peace. And this is why at the beginning of each part, it presents in white letters on a black background an explanation about the facts, about the materials, and about the innocents who are nothing more than victims in a war that seems, constantly, carried out without foundation. any.

Really, a job that, despite the tedium that the slowness of some images may cause, is worth seeing. And it is probably this film that opens a line of new genres, which make use of what new technologies provide.


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