Film: We Come as Friends (2014)

September 2, 2015 | By Mark R. Hasan

Film: Excellent

Transfer: n/a

Extras: n/a

Label: n/a

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Released: n/a

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Synopsis: Unsettling documentary filmed as Sudan is divided into separate North and South nations, and the severe challenges faced by the Christian South.

Special Features: n/a

Review:

Hubert Sauper’s We Come as Friends shares the same anti-colonial, utterly grim tenor as his Oscar-Nominated Darwin’s Nightmare (2004), an equally outstanding documentary where a swathe of African culture has been clobbered by the vestiges of European colonial powers, and levels of corruption guarantee the average citizen is effective fucked for generations.

Sauper’s fly-on-the-wall style is less pronounced, as Sauper flies from France to Africa in a tiny plane, hopping town to village to town until he reaches the massive country of Sudan, months before a referendum splits the civil war-torn country into rival (Arabic) north and (Christian) south quadrants.

He’s still rarely seen or heard on camera, but his voyaging is what propels the drama, adding increasing levels of dour lives affected by greed. The brilliance of Sauper’s technique involves letting his subjects present their views – essentially allowing them to hang themselves on-camera – and structuring the film like an essay (with especially dramatic compositions by Sauper and Barney Broomfield), with each scene ultimately forming components of an argument on how South Sudan’s efforts to grow into a democratic nation where revenues from oil riches will benefit every citizen are highly doubtful, unless there are severe changes in governmental policy.

Slim Twig’s sparse music is affecting and haunting, the visuals are thoroughly depressing, and two sequences sting long after the film is done: three schoolgirls recounting being ridiculed and bullied for wearing traditional clothes, speaking traditional language, and having their jewelry flushed down the toilet because self-serving American missionaries have exploited the country’s Christian religion as a means to inflict cultural genocide; and an old man told he must vacate his generations-old family farm because a Dallas-based company has bought a 60 year lease to use his land as it sees fit, taking whatever resources it can extricate and exploit for a mere $25,000 U.S.

The most shameful behaviour doesn’t come from missionaries or foreign corporations looking for economic bounty, but as filtered through Sauper’s lens, the South Sudanese government, giving blanket exploitation licenses to foreigners while its average, often rural citizens are reduced to homeless transients, forced to be ashamed of their culture.

A superb and truly heart-breaking work.

External References:
Editor’s Blog — IMDB

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