By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Hubert Sauper
Country: austria, france
Year: 2015
Running time: 110
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3362914/combined
Kyle says: “WE COME AS FRIENDS is Austrian director Hubert Sauper’s horrifying documentary about contemporary colonization of South Sudan. Perhaps depressing and infuriating are better adjectives. This constitutes numerous episodes about the exploitation of the resources and manipulation of the Africans of South Sudan. The villains are international in character, including Arabs, French, British, Chinese, and Americans, but the most craven of all are from Texas, which surprised me not at all: They manipulate a villager to sign over land rights for potential billions of dollars, in return for $25,000. The villager does not comprehend in the least the implications of the document he has signed. Chinese businessmen poison the local water supply while drilling for oil, claiming outrageously ‘Environmental protection is their responsibility.’ A United Nations representative maintains, ‘There must be a reason they’re still 200 years behind the rest of the world.’ Shallow stupid American missionaries (from Texas of course) look around at the malnourished unclothed uncomprehending Africans and insist ‘More important than reading, writing, and arithmetic is the fact that these are young women and men of God. Whatever you pray for, God will do. You must allow God to change your heart.’ Nation after nation declares its friendship for the Sudanese, and then makes plans to exploit the vast resources of oil and minerals, virtually without benefit to the Sudanese. The clearest Sudanese understanding of the various villains is that ‘A colonist is someone who comes to take a country which does not belong to him.’ When the inevitable evocation of the fate of Native Americans is briefly mentioned, we get as close as makes no difference to a realization that the result of this shameful international thievery is genocide. 4 cats
“Seen Saturday, March 22, 2014, New Directors/New Films at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.”