Directed by Andreas M. Dalsgaard
Columbia, 2015
Chances are when one conjures Colombia to mind a less than salubrious image springs to mind – staggeringly wealthy drug kingpins, endemic kidnapping plots, paramilitary foisted crime and corruption. Andreas M. Dalsgaard challenges these preconceptions with his instructive documentary Life is Sacred, a welcome opportunity to learn and see the quiet and hard-fought revolution that has been occurring in Colombia’s body politic. The film follows unorthodox presidential candidate Antanas Mockus and his enthusiastic young activist supporters attempts to reverse the vicious cycle of violence that is part of everyday life in Colombia, as an academic turned charismatic role model he fights an imaginative and positive election campaign designed to be a glint in the media’s eye. As mayor of Bogota he dresses his colleagues in Superman costumes as his campaign executes a procession of flash-mobs, publicity stunts and social media activities. With an indomitable trust in the fundamental good intentions of his fellow citizens he tackles bad traffic habits and criminal behavior with equal determinism, but his idealism is both his strength and his weakness in an aggressive political system which struggles to restore people’s faith in ever being able to make a difference.
The film is framed through the eyes of Katherine Miranda, a 22 year old student whose political awakening was ignited by the murder of her policeman father, a tragedy which harnessed her conviction to make every effort to prevent other families from enduring such grief. Like a South American iteration of the Obama campaign the green hued Mockus movement yells a mantra of change as its drumbeat, the young activists injecting a revitalizing energy and rebirth into a moribund political landscape. Shaken by the growing threat the entrenched elite bring in their special weapon, Venezuelan American spin doctor par excellence JJ Rendon, a figure who will resonate from those with an equal loathing of the Karl Rove and Alistair Campbell’s of the Western political spectrum, and soon the polls begin to align as the propaganda and misinformation pollutes the airwaves.
With obvious evidence of massive electoral fraud the optimism and momentum of change hits the rocky cliffs of a harsh reality, and in one brutally candid discussion with his mother Mockus asks what she thinks he’s achieved in his fifteen year campaign for reform and progress – ‘nothing’ she coolly replies. The 70% reduction in crime during his tenure as mayor would seem to challenge this assessment, with fragile but tenacious seeds of change sown among the younger generation. As with the other non-fiction films at the festival its another fascinating, sustained look at the contemporary political situation in a beautiful country facing difficult but not insurmountable challenges to build a safer and more equitable society, with a quiet note of optimism and progress for the future.
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