Notturno

Notturno (2020, Italy/France/Germany, Gianfranco Rosi)

Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) depicted the arrival of refugees to the Italian island of Lampedusa. So it made sense that his follow-up film would go further and examine where the refugees are coming from. Rosi could have gone to Africa but instead he traveled to the Middle East for Notturno.

As the opening credits inform us, Notturno was “shot over the past three years along the borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon.”

That is the only bit of geographical guidance the film gives. After that opening, we are plunged into various unnamed locations providing glimpses of tragedy, ruins, heartbreak and people deploying creative means of survival.

A mother mourning her son. Collapsed buildings, broken roads.

Women forced to fight. Soldiers defending borders while waiting. Endless waiting.
 

The collapsed buildings and empty streets mean displaced people forced to live in refugee camps.

We also see some of those terrorists/criminals responsible for the fighting in prison.

It becomes apparent from watching events unfold that even if all the fighting ended tomorrow, it would take decades before people can get back to any form of normality. In one of the most heartbreaking depictions, we see children recalling images of destruction, violence and losing loved ones. This shows the multi-generational impact of violence where a new generation is born without a home and knowing only war. Memories of this war will be passed down to their offspring. A chain of events that will take a lot of work to break.

The violence continues while the Western World turns a blind eye, even though the Western World is responsible for the mess in the first place.

At the start of the film, the following words appear:

“After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the First World War, the colonial powers sketched out new borders for the Middle East.

Over the following decades, greed and ambition for power gave rise to military coups, corrupt regimes, authoritarian leaders and foreign interference.

Tyranny, invasions and terrorism fed off each other in a vicious circle, to the detriment of the civilian populations.”

On first glance, these are accurate words that describe the situation in an objective manner. No taking of sides, no casting blame on colonial powers or the Western nations.

These politically correct words signal the film’s intent. The purpose of Notturno isn’t to place blame but instead to illustrate a state of things. The words “the detriment of the civilian populations” emphasize that the film will cover how citizens have been impacted by the power games that are still playing out in the Middle East. And that is what the film does. It shows suffering of everyday people and how their lives are still impacted.

A play in the film has words and images which provide some historical context on how events unfolded in Iraq. However, those brief dialogues and archival footage don't even scratch the surface.

Who is playing the power games in the Middle East? Answering this question is not the purpose of this film. For that, one has to dig deep in the words “foreign interference”.

These two words don’t even come close to describing the situation that continues to unfold in the Middle East because they don’t describe how decades of political assassinations and foreign supply of arms and money have destabilized the Middle East.

“Over the following decades, greed and ambition for power gave rise to military coups, corrupt regimes, authoritarian leaders and foreign interference.”

Will audience in Western nations understand who is referred in “greed and ambition for power”? The Western nations are still implicated by these words along with Middle Eastern dictators, governments and terrorist organizations.

Rosi shot the film himself and Notturno is packed with stunning images that pose relevant questions. There is beauty to be found amid the ruins and a world constantly aflame and echoing with sounds of gunfire. One haunting segment shows how the burning oil wells light up the night sky allowing a local to go duck hunting. As the world burns around him, he quietly goes about his way.