Berlinale 2014, Day 2 (We come as friends)

Today I have been to the Haus der Berliner Festspiele for the very first time. While it looks rather lovely from the outside, with the Berlinale decoration and all, the venue itself is just incredibly ugly and you are damned to neck pain for most seats. It’s almost as bad as the Friedrichstadtpalast, where the problem is a different one – most seats are too far to the side. After this one time, we actively avoided this venue and if possible, I would like to never return.

We come as friends
France/Austria 2013, Hubert Sauper, 109′

Hubert Sauper makes a documentary on South Sudan, mostly depicting how the world’s bigger forces such as China and the US are colonizing the country in a modern way while at the same time large parts of the population are suffering under malnutrition and soiled water sources.
Death count: Uncountable.

Shii and Pixelmatsch predicted that the film may be the worst one we would be seeing at the Berlinale. To be honest, I knew from the beginning that this would not be the case for me. This is not because I liked the film so much, but rather that the film managed to do what it should – transport information on the political situation in South Sudan and provoke my ire against its colonizers. Especially the part with the American missionaries was positively painful. When they call South Sudan “New Texas” and say “oh yeah, they didn’t like it when we took the land and put a fence around it, but at some point they got over it”, I wanted to throw up and trash the seats around me. In certain parts, the film is pushing all the right buttons with me, and I think that has some merit.

On the other hand, “We come as friends” is just so, so superficial. For the most part, it’s essentially a ploy from the French and Austrian governments to say: “Look at the US and China and how evil they are. They are colonizing African countries like we did 100 years ago!” Hey, France, the war in Algeria was merely 50 years ago. A lot of people involved with it are still alive, but somehow it’s fine to point the finger to others now. The other thing that bothered me with the film was how the majority of the film was spent showing the atrocities the Chinese and Americans are committing, the ones by destroying their land with industrialization and the others by destroying their culture by forcing them to throw it away. But the film never shows this culture, and rarely even shows the people besides the traditional “Look at how poor they are and how primitive it all is” shots. There are some hints at a rich culture in Sudan, but the way the film almost brushes over them only creates pity but never respect with the Sudanese people. The film does not seem to depict them in a good manner, rather as these primitive, poor people who need help.

All in all, I thought the film was worthwhile. I have never cared much for what happens in Africa and know almost nothing, so the way the film analyzes modern colonialism was worth a look for me. Other than that, this is an unpleasantly politically loaded film where way too many people from the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung were sitting in the audience wallowing in self-adulation.