Day 2. And the first day of screenings of the Official Section in competition at the Mostra de València. The programming began with the projection of Sympathy for the devil, French-Canadian co-production and debut feature by director Guillaume de Fontenay based on the memoirs of war correspondent Paul Marchand, protagonist of this story. With a direct style, camera in hand and a pulsating montage rhythm, The film takes us back to the beginning of the decade of the 90 of the last century and, specifically, to the besieged city of Sarajevo, in the midst of a conflict that would end with the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia. In this context of lacerating confrontation, Marchand walks the streets of a city collapsed by violence, the controls imposed by each of the opposing factions and in which death appears unexpectedly behind any window of one of the many buildings that make up its devastated layout.. Portrait of the violence of a senseless war, but also a profession, that of a journalist, in which political commitment is mixed, the spectacle and the need to denounce a truth that is lost in the dark recesses of the interests of international politics.
“In the year 92, When this conflict broke out in the former Yugoslavia, had 23 years and I felt very disturbed to see this collective apathy in the face of this situation”, commented Fontenay after its screening in a session before the media. “Sarajevo was not a very big city. It was a city of 300.000 inhabitants and I wondered how this situation could be allowed to continue for four years, without water, no electricity, no gas, etc." Para de Fontenay, The current situation of the Yugoslav conflict has its interest in a present in which the management of information and, with that, of the truth, continues to be one of the most worrying problems in our modern societies. “It cost me almost 14 years to put together this movie, and I believe that it continues to have a certain resonance today in a world in which the president of the greatest power in the world continues to release fake news, where there are a lot of interest groups trying to get him out of the White House, where there are still presidents who torture and kill journalists”, commented.
But if the Yugoslav conflict is of interest to Fontenay, it is because of that feeling of loss of coexistence., of a wound at the very heart of the idea of a Europe as a space of fraternity that would remain fractured after the war. “A Bosnia, before the conflict, there was a 80% of serbs called orthodox, 44% of Bosnians called Muslims, and the rest were Jews, Croats and other groups. It was a city where there were many churches mixed together, a very mixed city, very rich. (…) It was the reflection of Europe before Europe, as could have happened before in Córdoba where there were many mixed cultures. And it seemed important to me, at the current moment, tell how things were at this time. A symbolic aspect of all this is that in the checkpoints [military checkpoints], on both the Serbian and Bosnian sides, The soldiers' faces were the same.", highlights.
But, as we mentioned at the beginning, Sympathy for the devil It is the portrait of a profession, that of a journalist, and its function as a watchful eye of power. A look that, although it seeks to be as faithful as possible to reality, try to get away, in the words of the director of Canadian origin, of any type of Manichaeism. “I do not believe in a particular canon of journalism, And I don't consider Paul a hero either.. He was a person who could be equally hateful and endearing. (She could really be very hateful at times.), he was very intelligent, with a very lively spirit and a great writer. (…) Within journalists we have different types. We have those who are going to put on great shows and others who are going to be more impulsive., who are going to speak from the heart, like Paul. Some will write history, others will leave another type of mark. Paul Marchand's approach was more editorialist and had a very romantic point of view. That doesn't make him better or worse than the others., Every way of doing journalism is good”.
Leaving aside particular cases, Guillaume de Fontenay's film wants to rise in defense of a profession that, against what it might seem, finds more and more difficulties every day in carrying out its work as a watchdog against the excesses of power., so many times claimed as necessary for our democracies. “The job is now becoming more difficult than ever, Journalists are sometimes a target for those in power. we have seen it, For example, in the case of the evacuation of journalists in Syria so that the Turks can do whatever they want, without anyone telling. I wanted to make a film that was as raw and honest as possible regarding the profession of journalism.. There are those who do good journalism, place, there are those who are more involved, there are those who do it less, but it is still a complicated job (…) And if cinema makes young people want to take up this profession, far better. In any case, The last thing that was intended was to turn Paul Marchand into either a hero or a canon because I am not a journalist and it would not have been relevant. What is clear is that today we have to support journalists so that it is a tool of democracy and not control”. The example of the siege of Sarajevo rises, in this way, in symbol of that fight to preserve that fundamental idea. “There was a time in Sarajevo when newspapers like Le Monde, like CNN talked about stopping reporting because they were disgusted. It's when Paul Marchand says in the movie, At least they won't say they didn't know.. It's about capturing that idea. Really everyone knew it, just as we know what is happening in Syria, in Yemen or Sudan. But we have settled into this kind of collective apathy, hence I would like to transmit that cry from the heart of Paul Marchand, so that we do not abandon the world".
This idea of the fragility of coexistence also refers us to Fatwa, fifth feature film by Tunisian Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud, a film that takes us back to the moments immediately after the revolution that would bring democracy to their country at the beginning of the second decade of this 21st century., that is to say, like who says, just yesterday. In those moments, a man returns to his country from France, where he resides, after the death of his only son. When you return, discovers that the young man had been recruited by a radical Islamist group that intends to carry out several attacks against secular targets. That outside look, that of the one who resides outside, allows Ben Mahmoud to confront two radically confronted visions, that of the man who, even respecting the practice of religion, live in another world, against the irrational fanaticism pushed by the orthodoxy of religion. A look that could well serve as a reflection or starting point for debate to break taboos about what happens at the opposite end of the Mediterranean..
“The current situation is very different from the one described in the film. "Currently calm reigns.", commented Ben Mahmoud in front of the press and public. “There is, of course, a terrorist danger, as can exist in any other country today, but there is no longer that ideological confrontation that reigned after the revolution and before the Constitution of 2014. And proof of this is that two weeks ago they voted freely to elect the President of the Republic and a week before for the renewal of parliament and all in a calm and pluralistic environment.”. This situation of democratic normality, It did not prevent the director from encountering some problems when filming some of the sequences of his film.. “I have never had threats.”. What did happen is that, during filming, I wanted to film a scene inside the national assembly and the Islamist party opposed it. This is the scene in which the protagonist is listening to his ex-wife's speech. [an activist who has written a book about the secularism of Tunisian society] on the car radio. "This scene actually should have been filmed under the dome of the assembly in the presence of the deputies.".
The arrival of democracy, the multiplicity of parties and the system of freedoms, I would be, in the words of the director, the best prevention against certain distorting and violent extremisms. “In Tunisia this threat is not being hidden. During the dictatorship it was known that Islamist activities existed, But since there was no freedom of expression, we only knew about it through rumors or the Western press.. Now everything is revealed, “Public powers do not have the right to interfere or control information and I do not believe there is a will to hide the existence of this threat.”. A situation that, however, It is still very far from being accepted in other countries in the area of influence of the religion based on the Koran.. “It is the first time that I have presented a secular character, and this in some countries has been a bit difficult. For example, In Egypt it was not easy to present this character of this woman who was seen as a traitor to religion., and when I said that he was simply a secular character, They told me I was playing with words. In many cases I did not have to face censorship, but yes to the resistance of the population. The actress who plays the role of the mother is actually a singer and the truth is that it was difficult for her to carry out this role due to the possible rejection of the public.", comments Ben Mahmoud regarding the exposure to which his cast has been exposed. “In some countries in the Arab world they told me that I could only make this film in Tunisia because there is democracy.”, but I couldn't have done this while in Saudi Arabia, For example. Or that I could never promote the figure of a bad Muslim, a character who has gone to Mecca and prays, but baby, "he bets on horses and has lovers.". G.LEON
