Triage and the volunteer witnesses

Another must see film,Triage, the last film from the Bosniak director Danis Tanović, the man that debuted with No man's land, that absolute masterpiece.
I had not read any review of the film before watching it, I just knew the director and that was enough. In fact, I didn't know that it's based on one book, and I even was unfamiliar with the triage word.

Once again Tanović confronts us with the reality of war, but unlike in his previous film, this time no comic situations are allowed to emerge from the drama, this time war is depicted as it is, brutal and painful, and suffering turns so infectious as the stupidity that causes it. Maybe the irony underlying his previous film was an attempt to reflect the Balkan character, this time hell is in Kurdistan, not in Bosnia, so there's no need for that.

A photojournalist spends one month in Kurdistan (just days before Saddam fancied to spray the civil population with chemical agents). He's about to die there, but he survives and makes it back to Europe where he'll live tormented by his previous experiences and will suffer some sort of posttraumatic stress disorder...

I quite like this film. It's a story about how we can internalize the suffering of the others and how it can devour us, a story about untold stories, a story about understanding and redemption... but above all this film is a tribute to those men who risk their lifes to tell us in images what many of us don't want or don't care to know, the pain and the misery of others, sometime so far and sometimes so close, but usually so ignored.

Since the first time that I attended to a photojournalism exhibition (one about fratricide wars that was held in my town in the late 90s) I've ever felt an enormous respect for these professionals who dare to cross the line and walk the mined fields in the back yard of our comfortable societies...
Nowadays, when there seems to be a camera in every hand and an internet connection in every corner, we could think that everyone can be a photojournalist, and furthermore in real time... but I don't think so. It's not the same portraying the reality that you and yours are suffering than travelling the world seeking the tragedies that complete unknowns are drowning in, being a volunteer witness of horror so that others can also see it and taste it, and vomit their discomfort on those that allow it and cause it.

The two pics below are not directly related to the film, but are 2 of the most impressive pics that I've seen in some time. I "stole" them with my camera in the Xixón photoperiodism exhibition in summer 2009. Iran and the green revolution, by Olivier Laban-Mattei, please, visit his site.