Wonderful, peace! The West has managed to keep the monster of war at a safe distance for a long time. Well, about 1,500 kilometers away, in our case. Then it sometimes starts to itch. Is this even real life? Isn't this too boring, too superficial, too fake? So you're going on holiday. In search of real, authentic life and excitement and sensation. To Syria, for example, Somalia or Afghanistan. Walking around white and rich on the battlefield.
War tourism, it exists. It is small, expensive and the participants do not like to show it off. At first glance it also seems strange. Why would anyone voluntarily go to war? Why would you go to hell on vacation? In the documentary Danger Zone (NPO 2), Lithuanian-Polish director Vita Maria Drygas follows three war tourists and a tour guide.
An American window cleaner, a British contractor and an Italian translator – all three feel unfulfilled and looking for real life. Tour guide Rick Sweeney of War Zone Tours has an additional reason: “It's complicated at home, dangers are simple.” So he walks with his clients through blasted streets, between soldiers with Kalashnikovs and hungry civilians who have lost their homes and loved ones. The tourists pose with a gun on a car wreck or against the wall in a torture cellar where someone has been executed, between the bullet holes. In Syria, a desperate mother wants to give her blonde daughter to tourists. In a refugee camp, small children pelt tourists with stones.
What is striking is that you hardly hear gunfire and explosions. Only the front in Syria resembles the war as we know it from TV. In Somalia there is a particular fear of terrorist attacks. The British Andrew has to keep telling his debuting traveling companion that this is a real war zone: “You are now in one of the most dangerous places on earth! A bomb could explode here at any moment!” The tourists see little action but a lot of untold suffering from innocent civilians.
Is this sick? Yes. It is difficult to empathize with these tourists. War tourism is also too marginal to be a serious problem. But just like with the movie, for example The Zone of Interest – about villa residents next to Auschwitz – you slowly get the feeling: this is us. This is how the Western bourgeoisie lives. In luxury, freedom and peace, with misery on the other side of the fence. Get an adrenaline shot in the evening from a crime series or the news. And backpacking through a poor country during the holidays, marveling at the exotic misery.
Unmanned cars
Kadir van Lohuizen made the four-part documentary, Food for Thought (NPO 2) about the international agricultural industry. In the first part the photographer and documentary maker filmed American cow farmers, in the second part he goes to China where food production is being tackled energetically. Compared to the US, much looks old-fashioned, with nasty battery cages for chickens, for example. But China does have unmanned cars that deliver meals in the city. As in the first part, Van Lohuizen also shows alternatives: innovative entrepreneurs who investigate methods that are less damaging to the climate.
Very educational, Van Lohuizen beautifully captures the food flows and the enormous networks. But it remains so cold. As if the people present have also turned into machines. It often feels like an information film, with all those slick sales pictures and streamlined production processes. You're just happy when a picking robot gets stuck or a spraying robot doesn't want to take off.
#review #holiday #war #walking #white #rich #battlefield