Poster for the documentary film "Waltz with Bashir" (IMDP)
World cinema presented a large number of films that dealt with genocide crimes in human history, some of which were dramatic, and were able to depict the devastation and devastation left by the brutality of the killers to a large extent, and others were documentary, bearing testimonies from survivors, and others from the killers.
From Rwanda to Cambodia, from Indonesia to Bosnia Herzegovina and Sabra and Shatila, the lens of cinema does not stop recording its testimonies. Below, we review a group of the most famous films that dealt with genocide:
The movie "The Killing Fields"
The 1984 film “The Killing Fields” depicts the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia during the 1970s, through the story of a Cambodian journalist and his American colleague as they navigate the horrors of genocide and the forced labor camps it established. the system.
Skulls of Khmer Rouge victims in Cambodia (Reuters)
The "Khmer Rouge" ruled Cambodia under the leadership of Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979, and their attempts to form and build a new social order led to the death of about two million people in Southeast Asian countries, who died either from murder, hunger, disease, or overwork. This stage was called the "Cambodian genocide", as the number of victims ranged between 1.5 million and 3 million dead.
The events of the movie "The Killing Fields" revolve around the true story of American journalist Sidney Schanberg, who was covering the civil war in Cambodia, and along with Cambodian journalist Dith Pran, he covered some of the tragedies and madness of war.
When the American forces left, Dith Pran sent his family to America, and stayed to help Schanberg cover the event. As an American, when the time came to leave, the American journalist had no problem leaving the country, but the situation was different for Pran.
Pran was captured by the communists and sent to a labor camp, where the Khmer Rouge would immediately execute anyone they suspected of entering a formal education system, so Pran feigned ignorance and concealed his true identity. He later escaped and made his way on foot through the killing fields to a Red Cross camp, where he eventually met up with Schanberg after his return to the United States.
Schanberg, a New York Times correspondent, won a prestigious Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the war in Cambodia, but the colleague and friend who made it possible was trapped in Cambodia with his life in grave danger.
“The Killing Fields” stars Sam Waterston as American journalist Sidney Schanberg, and Haing Ngor as Cambodian journalist Dith Pran. Ngor, himself a genocide survivor, was not a professionally trained actor, but he became the first Asian actor to win Best Supporting Actor and the second Asian actor to win an Academy Award.
British director Terry George filming "Hotel Rwanda" (IMDP)
Hotel Rwanda movie
As for the film “Hotel Rwanda”, directed by Terry George, it is based on real events in its depiction of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The events of the film revolve around the civil war that took place in the 1990s between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda, and it conveys the situation of families, including The family of Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu citizen who is married to a Tutsi citizen. His work is managing a hotel, which becomes a refuge for his family, relatives, and residents of his neighborhood.
Paul works hard to ensure that none of the hotel residents are harmed, and he tries to get them to a safe place outside the country through one of the Americans without being detected by the Hutu men who will not have mercy on any of them. Meanwhile, Paul was searching for his missing nephews through a foreign nurse who treated the wounded and those affected by the massacres.
The real value of the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” which was released in 2004, lies in its depiction of the true roots of genocide in Rwandan society. It also depicted the impact of brutal crimes on the hero of the work. Perhaps the most influential scene is the one in which the hero returns from abroad to the hotel after witnessing... The effects of crimes, and suddenly collapsed after he realized that the bodies lying in the streets had no one to feel their pain.
The film boldly reveals the absurdity and strangeness of Western interventions, and the silence that reached the point of complicity in the slaughter of nearly a million people in one of the most powerful examples of ethnic cleansing in modern history. The hero of the work, “Paul,” confronts the commander of the Canadian forces in Rwanda, and expresses his rejection to him. For the orders he received not to interfere in the conflict between the Tutsis and the Hutu.
Simultaneously with the film's release, a book edited by director Terry George was published, containing essays on the history of the genocide, the full screenplay written by Keir Pearson with Terry George, and over 70 photographs of the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda.
Film "The Act of Killing"
Perhaps the biggest difference between the documentary and drama genres is the natural cruelty that is transmitted from the realistic stories of genocide in documentaries such as “The Act of Killing” by director Joshua Oppenheimer, released in 2012.
The film delves deep into the mass killings in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966, in which government-sanctioned death squads targeted suspected communists and Indonesians of Chinese descent. The film follows former paramilitary commanders re-enacting their crimes, providing harrowing insights into the mentality of the perpetrators.
Strangely enough, the film project began focusing on the families of the victims, but many of them were arrested while Joshua Oppenheimer was interviewing them. In the process, he began meeting the executioners, so he decided to focus the story on them.
Through that transformation, the film presented a number of mass murderers who could have been movie stars. They took the opportunity offered to them by the documentary's maker to make their own film, an account of the years they spent carrying out a purge that killed more than a million people from 1965 to 1966.
In the film, Anwar Congo looks at a black-and-white photo of a young man who looks like a stylish mix of the most famous Hollywood stars, and says, “This is me, wearing a camouflage plaid shirt.” The film’s photographer advises against dressing this way, adding, “I wore jeans to kill, to look With great looks, I imitate movie stars.”
The film "Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave"
The 1999 documentary Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave, directed by Leslie Woodhead, provides a comprehensive investigation of the Srebrenica massacre during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia in 1995. It includes testimonies from survivors, witnesses and international officials, It highlights the events that preceded the genocide and its repercussions.
The work provides a detailed account of the massacre of an estimated 7,000 Muslims in July 1995, in the Bosnian "safe enclave" of Srebrenica. The novel relies not on eyewitness testimony, but on some astonishing footage and video recordings from a variety of sources, including a British reporter, the Dutch army and even Serbian camera crews, all treated as if it were a puzzle game to re-paste a torn record.
The movie "Waltz with Bashir"
The film "Waltz with Bashir" sparked a lot of controversy in Israel, which participated in its production, and in the Arab press, as it provides a partial acknowledgment of the Israeli army's responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
Anwar Congo... the elegant man in the movie “The Law of Murder” (IMDP)
The director of the work, Ari Folman, is one of those who participated in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the film begins with a story of nightmares attacking one of his colleagues in the battalion for killing 26 dogs in order to silence them while the Israeli forces stormed a Lebanese village, and then begins an attempt to search to remember his role in that war.
Folman presents a triple paradox, represented by a state of remorse and blaming the leaders of the Israeli army for killing about 3,500 Palestinians, but at the same time he tries to involve another party in the responsibility, and the film begins with his colleague suffering from nightmares about having to kill 26 stray dogs.
"Waltz with Bashir" won 19 awards, the most important of which is the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, and 24 nominations, the most important of which is the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Best Foreign Film at the 2009 Oscars, and two awards for Best Animated Film and Best Foreign Film at the 2009 Oscars. BAFTA" 2008.
Unlike the previous film, the three directors of "Massacre" tried to answer the question about the reasons that prompted the killers to commit genocide, but instead the question turned into countless questions.
The film “Massacre” is a documentary directed by Monica Borgmann, Lokman Slim, and Hermann Thyssen. It was released in 2005, and won many awards, at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005, and at the Marseille International Film Festival. The film was made by obtaining the testimonies of 6 Lebanese Phalange militiamen who participated in the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
Director Monica Bergman admitted - in press statements - the difficulty of the matter, saying, “I had many nightmares in my sleep and I felt that I could not bear the burden of completing the work after translating a 40-minute interview about a very horrific violent scene, as the scene related to a detailed description of the killing process.” "With a knife."
Source: Al Jazeera + agencies