(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Natalia Orozco has provided us with a useful documentary on the negotiation process leading up to Colombia's peace treaty. Peace Prize winner Santos gets to play the leading role in the story, while his counterparts in FARC come up well. The film provides a unique insight into the dynamics of peace negotiations, and is a good introduction to the civil war's conflict lines. The violent suffering of war is a red thread in history. What the film fails to explain is the popular opposition to the peace agreement that was negotiated.
A unique insight. When the weapons are quiet depicts the Santos government's main negotiators and their counterparts in FARC's leadership from 2010 to 2016. Throughout four of the five years of peace talks, Orozco has filmed the events. She has gained exclusive access to the key players over time. This gives us not only the president's and the guerrilla leader's retrospective perspective on how things went, but insight into the thoughts of the key players in different parts of the negotiation process. The documentary provides with this a unique insight into the way forward towards ceasefire.
The interviews in this documentary are historically important. With this film, Orozco seeks to tell the story of the final phase of the war very specifically, but also to show the character of the long civil war. Through extensive use of archival material, we follow Colombia's political history from the summer of 2010 to the end of 2016, but also the main lines of the 52-year war. The first more profound, and the latter more anecdotal. After all, with one hour and 53 minutes available, what you have to do is limited.
Santos. The film's main story begins when Juan Manuel Santos wins the presidential election on August 7, 2010. The president is portrayed as the one who establishes and secures momentum in the peace process. Not many critical questions are asked about his motivation or his background as President Uribe's Minister of Defense. A large number of Santos' peace negotiators are also featured in the documentary. Facilitators like Henry Acosta, and dealers like Humberto de la Calle, Sergio Jaramillo and Frank Pearl are interviewed on several occasions. President Santos' older brother and adviser Enrique Santos Calderón also shares his perspective on the first phase of the peace process. The one that comes out the best in the film is the government's main distributor Humberto de la Calle. He appears reflected, empathetic and restrained. In particular, the documentary evokes the lawyer's ability to relate to the opposing party's situation. This impresses the filmmaker, and it shines through in several interview situations.
The interviews in this documentary are historically important.
On the opposite side of the negotiating table we meet the leadership of the FARC guerrilla. The one who gets the most space in the documentary is Commander Pablo Catacumbo. Like Santos, Caracumbo gets to comment on the course of events from start to finish. We are introduced to the commander's mother, and we see him unfold politically in private settings. FARC leader Timochenko is also repeatedly interviewed in the documentary, but he does not come as close to us. Otherwise, very central personalities are interviewed in FARC's negotiating delegations, such as Iván Márquez, Jesús Santrich, Pastor Alape and Marcos León Calarcá.
Resistance to the peace process. FARC doesn't seem ready to take as clear self-criticism as the filmmaker wants. Less critical questions are raised to the government than to the FARC. Nor is it discussed how a man who fought as hard for war as Santos could end up as a peace prize winner. However, the documentary's most obvious blind zone is the popular opposition to the peace process. The winners of the referendum, which therefore rejected the peace agreement the week before Santos was awarded the peace prize, receive little attention. No opponents of the peace process are interviewed. When we see in the last minutes of the film the negotiated peace agreement being rejected in the referendum on October 2, 2016, it all seems more random. Admittedly, the deal was canceled by a meager margin, but the film does not therefore provide any good explanations for why the people chose as they did. Nor does the documentary explain the near fifty changes that were made to the text of the agreement after the referendum, so that the Colombian Congress could ratify the peace agreement on November 30, thus bringing the peace process back on track.
The winners of the referendum, which therefore rejected the peace agreement the week before Santos was awarded the peace prize, receive little attention.
An essential part of this picture concerns former President Alvaro Uribe's relationship to the peace talks. He soon became a leading voice against the peace negotiations, which also appears from the documentary, but then without this being explained in detail. In the referendum, Uribe also led the "no" campaign. Uribe was still Santos' ally where the film begins, in the summer of 2010. For the FARC, the two were the same piece. Where the film ends, at the end of 2016, however, Uribe has become the strongest opponent of the peace process. The question is how the former prime minister, who thus had Santos as his defense minister for four years, went from being the president's supporter to becoming the nemesis of the peace agreement. The theme is unilaterally highlighted in this documentary. Only Santos speaks in the case. Neither Uribe nor any of his allies are interviewed. The documentary shows some short news clips with Uribe's statements against the peace process, but his rationale for these attitudes is little explored. Zuluaga will not be interviewed either. He was thus President Santos' opponent in the 2014 election, and also a very important opponent of both the peace negotiations and the peace agreement that was a result of these.
The movie is shown on Movies from the South 9.-19.november
