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{"id":11026,"date":"2023-06-05T09:30:59","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T09:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lossi36.com\/?p=11026"},"modified":"2023-09-08T15:19:33","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T15:19:33","slug":"why-go-to-war-when-you-dont-have-to-see-you-in-chechnya-at-the-goeast-festival-of-central-and-eastern-european-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lossi36.com\/2023\/06\/05\/why-go-to-war-when-you-dont-have-to-see-you-in-chechnya-at-the-goeast-festival-of-central-and-eastern-european-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Why go to war when you don\u2019t have to?: \u201cSee You In Chechnya\u201d at the goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film"},"content":{"rendered":"
Alexander Kvatashidze\u2019s autobiographical documentary <\/b>See You In Chechnya<\/i><\/b> (2016) is much less about Chechnya or Georgia than about the moral and psychological questions and consequences of war journalism as a profession. Re-screened last April during the goEast Filmfestival in Wiesbaden, this very sincere film remains \u2013 unfortunately \u2013 highly relevant.<\/b><\/p>\n
Put bluntly, there are much better documentaries about Chechnya. A relatively old one is <\/span>The Making of a New Empire<\/span><\/i> (1999, dir.<\/span> Jos de Putter<\/b><\/a>). It traces the connection between war and business through the life of Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev, a local strongman or <\/span>dzhigit<\/span><\/i>. A more recent film, <\/span>Welcome to Chechnya<\/span><\/i> (2020, dir. David France), has acquired fame for using<\/span> deepfake technology<\/b><\/a> to tell the story of Russian activists who rescue Chechen victims from violent anti-gay purges. In comparison, Kvatashidze\u2019s film is much more modest and reflective.<\/span><\/p>\n Kvatashidze is an omnipresent but mostly invisible narrator in <\/span>See You in Chechnya<\/span><\/i>. The film can tentatively be divided into two parts, separated from each other by Kvatashidze\u2019s question as to why certain people choose to go to an active war site to report on it, when they do not need to. As he flips through his photojournalistic archive, he tells the story of how he fell in love with French journalist<\/span> Fran\u00e7oise Spiekermeier<\/b><\/a>, followed her to Grozny in 1999, and was unexpectedly drawn into a circle of seasoned war reporters. The first part of the film is deeply personal, and provides an honest insight into the shock of witnessing war in Chechnya, which, at home in Tbilisi, had seemed very distant.<\/span><\/p>\n Kvatashidze\u2019s inability to explain to himself\u00a0 what this experience did to him, and why \u2013 for a number of years \u2013 it made him want to become a war reporter, sets in motion the second part of the film. Kvatashidze travels to meet the war photographers that he had met in the late 90s and early 2000s.<\/span><\/p>\n Roughly speaking, the lives of his friends and acquaintances followed three pathways. For some, including not only Spiekermeier but also two Italian war photojournalists, war as such became an anchor to find meaning and truth. Antonio Russo\u2019s endeavours to uncover atrocities and unconventional weapon use in Chechnya led to his<\/span> mysterious<\/b><\/a> murder<\/b><\/a> in October 2000. Another Italian journalist Kvatashidze encounters, <\/span>Giorgio Fornoni<\/b><\/a>, has likewise forsaken family life for his work as a lone wolf reporting in Bosnia, Angola, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Liberia, Congo, and Chechnya. He believes the space of war to be more truthful than everyday life in peacetime. \u201cI go to war,\u201d Fornoni says in the film, \u201cbecause there, people are not deceitful. They are at their limits.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n A second group \u2013 including, perhaps, Kvatashidze himself \u2013 seem forever scarred by their experiences, remain in a perpetual transition, and struggle to return to normality. Chechen journalist Raisa Talkhanova gave up her family life for the sake of her career and her self-expression. Forced to move to the US after the war, she permanently lives \u2018in transit,\u2019 longing to go back to a Chechen society which no longer exists. French journalist Brice Fleutiaux was <\/span>kidnapped<\/b><\/a> in Chechnya in October 1999. He was freed, wrote a book about his life as a hostage, but could never return to normality and<\/span> took<\/b><\/a> his own life in 2001.<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps the most candid case in the film is that of Nick Downie. The British<\/span> war veteran-turned-journalist<\/b><\/a> explains how he started out idealistically, believing that reporting on violence around the world might change policies or attitudes at home, but he acknowledges that this was not what kept him going to so many conflict zones. Instead, war became a profession to sustain himself, a semi-addictive adventure, and ultimately a habit. Disillusioned at the end of his career, he found value in family, and moved to South Africa to care for his ageing mother.<\/span><\/p>\n