Grude handed two African Union soldiers a camera and told them to film anything ‘important’. One year, 523 tapes and some seriously talented editing later, here is the story of the banality and tedium of soldiering and peace-keeping that is, perhaps, more undermining than the terrifying certainty of a deathly conflict with Al-Shabaab in Somalia. These are men before they are soldiers, we see moments of tender generosity juxtaposed with the ever present spectre of violent death. Two-time Oscar nominee EP Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence) describes it as an “urgent, haunting look at our secret wars”. Uncensored and unsettling, this is the coalface and the canaries have stopped singing.
Courtesy of the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) & the Director
Grude travels courtesy of NFI and will attend screenings in CT
Cape Town
- V&A
- Sat 10, 5.30pm + Q&A
Johannesburg
- Rosebank
- Sat 3, 5.30pm
