3 Films To Raise Awareness

Cinema has enormous value as art, but this is multiplied when it also keeps one or more valuable messages in the background of the films it encompasses. Many times we say that a film is good or bad depending on how it tells what it intends to convey, however in the viewer’s retina the message remains attached to this way of staging it.

That is why we are  going to recommend a series of films that raise awareness. Recordings that appeal to us because of their way of telling, but above all because of their background, so that when we see them they leave on our palate the taste of learning and reasons for reflection.

“4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days”

In a certain way and in recent years there was an orphan movie-goer population. The cinema that called itself realistic had become a way of reflecting the vanity of the director on duty and transgression had been associated with the truly vulgar.

Inspired by works like Passolini’s, some wanted to portray violence, forgetting that art always supports an idea or at least tries to convey something meaningful that appeals to our sleeping perceptions.

The case of “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days” is radically opposite, since Cristian Mungiu does not intend to make the film part of his portrait. It is such a pure reality that it shows us that no one is happy, since sometimes it never yields valid conclusions or hope. He has not the slightest intention of making art and just like he does the best cinema.

What is is. The interpretation is what changes in the later analysis of the viewer. Therefore you will see a movie that is said “ugly”, quite disturbing but not at all pretentious. It is not made for those who are against abortion, those who are in favor of the right to choose, women who do it without giving it importance or for those who have a hard time that will take time to integrate emotionally. It is not made for anyone, and it is made for everyone.

The director goes absolutely beyond any moral position, he gives us reality and we interpret it. It may seem an extreme case, alien, repellent, rare, poorly focused or with unnecessarily harsh details.

No matter what it seems to us, because regardless of our position we will become aware, to know why. My conclusion was: how many “baby doctors” do we vote for and praise? Each one to make their own, the new wave of Romanian cinema is much more than cinema and it needs the viewer to “participate” as well.

Hotel Rwanda

Nobody really knows to what extent colonization and its harmful effects can permeate a region. Violent colonization perpetrates even the bones of the country that is “taken” to break it apart and never return it to its original reality.

The civil war in Rwanda will be remembered as an armed conflict that degenerated into a genuine genocide of the Tutsis  by the Hutus. The film reflects the end of a very long confrontation in which the European colonization by Germany, and later by Belgium, played a decisive role in irreversibly aggravating the conflicts between the two groups.

Belgians supported the use of an ethnic card in 1934 that gave Tutsis a higher social status and better positions throughout the administration. Somehow, with this instrument they marked social differences that did not exist before or existed in a much more diffuse way.

Both groups came to see themselves as authentic “demons” and the torture and harassment became really cruel, protected by the idea that they were different human beings. Something similar to what happened in Nazi Germany with the Jews.

The Hutu hatred towards everything Tutsi was therefore consolidated and promoted by the Belgian colonization. Something that invites us to reflect on how  all the illegal takeovers or occupations of territories have serious consequences for the population of the countries that suffer them. Thus, reparation by international organizations is an obligation in all these cases.

Brokeback Mountain

Imagine that one day in the morning you wake up and you cannot love how you really feel about a person. This love will never alter the lives of others, on the contrary, if it is lived with intensity and freedom, it will open doors and build new and more open realities.

It would be a good exercise of imagination and in many parts of the world this is already a reality, despite conventions and individual positions. In other places this love can cause the repudiation of an entire society, exclusion or even the death sentence. The reason? Loving yourself having the same external genitalia.

In this Ang Lee film we have proof that love moves, shudders and is longed for when it is true, regardless of who it is felt. Hatred is based on ignorance, which in many cases comes from a lack of tolerance.

To eradicate this fault, there is only room for fighting against those who believe they have the right to judge the preferences of others. The consequence of ignoring these types of attitudes is unnecessary suffering on the part of people who only prefer or want.

It would be the case of the woman played by Michelle Williams, betrayed by a husband who had no other way than to walk the socially accepted path in order to continue safe, although with his feelings amputated.

This is just a sample of three movies that ask us questions. Questions that do not have a simple answer because they allude to conflicting forces and feelings. You will have to be you, as a citizen of this place called the world, who choose your own option.