The Legacy of Colonialism in The Middle East

Notturno (2020) - Rosi 

Gianfranco Rosi, the documentarian behind such astonishing work as Sacro GRA and Fire at Sea, comes back with a biting and enormously affecting documentary on people living on the periphery of the Middle-East conflicts. Culling from the footage shot in Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon for three years, Rosi patches together the impact of years of carnage and violence has on its inhabitants, especially on children. 

But Notturno, as the title implies, night precedes daybreak. Hopefully, this affected generation can break the cycle and move forward. 

Notturno starts with grieving mothers paying a pilgrimage to now an empty prison building where their sons are tortured and killed. One of the mother touches the walls, saying that she feels her son's spirit. She wails again as she feels the spirit leaving. 

There is an otherworldly image of a hunter/solider duck hunting in a marshland in his little paddleboat. Two oil field fires on the horizon bathes the night sky with an ominous orange glow, as he sets the trap with a set of fake ducks in the water and silently waits. Prevailing sound is the gunfire in the distance. There's a hunger in his eyes - no politics or war, just pure survival instincts. 

A young couple, dressed in western clothes on the rooftop overlooking the city, smoking hookah- the setting is very romantic. There's occasional gunfire in the distance. The young man is getting ready to do his nightly rounds as a singing messenger of god, leaving his secular day world behind. He walks around with his drum, chanting in a clear voice at night, casting his shadow under the dim street light. 

There's a platoon of Iraqi women soldiers patrolling a vast outposts. They come back to the shared barracks, tie their long hair all at the same time- it is a silent, communal ritual. Then they huddle together around a small gas stove to warm up their hands. Even in harsh surroundings, Rosi sees beauty everywhere. 

A doctor in a psychiatric ward where people with PTSD are treated is preparing to stage a therapeutic theater session. He gives out the scripts to a group of patients. These patients practices and memorize their lines in their bed, trying to do a good job for the doctor. The script is about how the colonial powers provided the settings for decades of armed conflict, government corruptions and the rise of religious fundamentalists. 

We move on to a very young boy in yellow rain cover in a fishing vessel at night. He is operating the pulley. He comes home exhausted and crashes on the sofa. It seems he is the oldest of the 8 siblings and one who provides income for the entire family. He goes out in the morning with his pellet gun to hunt for birds for food. His name is Ali and we go back and forth between the progress of the stage play in the psychiatric wards and Ali's daily life. 

Then we are introduced muddy tents city that is a refugee camp. Many children are experiencing flashbacks of being beaten and tortured by ISIS. They were captives of those fundamental extremists. Their crayon drawings depict unimaginable horror - decapitations, hanging, maiming, etc. Their teacher consoles them but helpless to stop them from having nightmares. 

Ali gets up early in the morning to stand on the side of the road until hunters drive by. They need to have someone to pick up their prey after they shoot them down. It's a grueling work. But in order to feed his family, he has to take any kind of job. 

The film features not only a human toll in the region but the broken infrastructure - river crossings are largely dependent on rickety square rafts that bump into each other, cars driving over the waterfall created by bomb blasted ravine in the middle of the road. The rows of ruined empty buildings... it goes on forever like that. 

Notturno ends with the close up of Ali's incredibly youthful face, his bright eyes darting the sky, unsure of what future will bring. The image invokes some of the cinema's most provoking shots - the freeze frame of Antoine Doinel's face in The 400 Blows, Monika's dead stare in Summer with Monika and the close up of Florya in Come and See to name a few. Then again, I am reminded that Ali is not a fictional character, but a real boy growing up in an unforgiving world. Notturno is undoubtedly, one of the best films of the year.

Juxtaposition of the Refugee Crisis and the Old Europe

Fire at Sea (2016) - Rosi

Europe's refugee crisis is perhaps the biggest humanitarian crisis the continent has ever experienced since the WWII. Gianfranco Rosi, an Italian filmmaker whose observational documentary Sacro GRA made a splash in 2014, here focuses more narrowly on Italy's refugee crisis on the island of Lampedusa, a tiny island between the African continent and Sicily- the case clearly being served as a synecdoche concerning the state of whole Europe. Fire at Sea a devastating look at the human toll juxtaposed with the old way of life the homogenic white Europe has enjoyed for years.

In a parallel action, we see the flight of refugees, mostly from North Africa and some from the Middle East crammed in on tiny ships, being rescued by Lampedusa's patrol team, armed with helicopters and patrol boats, then we follow Samuele, a typical engergetic school boy and his everyday life on the island.

Due to bad weather and communication problems, sometimes the rescue team get there too late. Reportedly 15,000 people lost their lives of starvation, exhaustion and drowning off the coast of the island.

Slingshot wielding Samuele is destined to be a fisherman, just like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather but only if he gets over his sea sickness first. He has a lazy eye problem and suffers from hyper tension.

A local medical doctor who experienced the human misery first hand, tells the harrowing account of what he witnessed - piles of dead bodies of women and children, chemical burns on bodies caused by diesel fuel mixed in with sea water, dehydration, hunger, etc. It's the same doctor who treats Samuele for his hypertension.

In a crowded refuge camp, harrowing journeys of refugees of watery death (or near death) are sung by a Nigerian preacher who continues to document their flight in oral tradition - they fled their home countries (Eritrea, Mali, Syria, Nigeria, Sudan...) because of bombs were going off, they crossed the Saharan desert, drinking their own piss, they were tortured and driven out from Libya, then they were forced out to sea.

But there are sparks of joy in the camps too, as makeshift soccer games between many different countries, resulting in momentary eruption of cheers and laughter.

We observe simple lives of the fishing village in the island - people requesting Sicilian love songs for their spouses on the radio, diving in a wet suit into a roiling sea for sea urchins, kids being kids without any interjection.

Fire at Sea refuses to be a rhetorical documentary. There are no narrations nor sit down interviews with locals or 'experts' about how they feel about the tides of Immigrants coming ashore or what could be done about it. It is more of a straight up reportage on the ground, simply showing the magnitude of the crisis that begs your attention and understanding.

And it is a gut wrenching experience at times. Bodybags, tears and wailing are as common as Samuele and his friends shooting airgun at the sky. Simply juxtaposing the crisis and the tranquil, simple, traditional lives which I'm sure have continued unchanged for hundreds of years, Rosi lets viewer to take in and think for themselves about the situation without judgment.

Fire at Sea won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale and was selected as the Italian entry for the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language film.