Witness

I admit I didn't see all the series, only the South Sudan part. But it was more than enough.

Being there for one year I have a pretty good grasp of the things in the country. And while the video seems to have been taken in South Sudan, there are a lot of inconsistencies during the documentary.

For one, I NEVER saw one single tribal scar. It is virtually impossible to film so many people in South Sudan and NEVER encounter one that has the head scars revealing the belonging to a tribe.

People speaking in French. Not likely. Maybe they were refugees from Centrafrican Republic, but that kind of information is not given.

A succession of images that lead you to think that a UN helicopter was transporting South Sudanese military WITH weapons and ammunition. UN regulations specifically forbid this.

The military shown in the documentary don't wear the SPLA (Sudan's People Liberation Army) flags, instead they wear the Ugandan flag. Furthermore, they seemingly engage in operations in the neighboring countries, without any concern for being out of their country.

Frankly, as the documentary moved on I became gradually less and less attentive, since it was so lame. So there might be a lot more things that don't add up.

My opinion? The director had no idea what he was going to make the documentary about, so he just grabbed videos from wherever he could go, put them together and couldn't care less if anybody figured that nothing made sense.

Avoid the documentary (at least the "South Sudan" part). I gave it 2 stars for reminding me about that country, but that is all it did.

Contrary to the other two user reviews, I found the series rather entertaining, albeit admittedly not as intense as I would have liked. They shed more light than, say, Ros Kemp's factual series on gangs, yet fall short of being hard hitting docos (La Vida Loca by Poveda, being one of the most insightful portray of gang culture, violence, and redemption).

It is not my intention to debate whether or not the blurred narrators were actual gangsters, by the same manner I don't question whether the sicario in El Sicario was indeed a hit man. Real criminals don't jeopardize their lives by letting themselves filmed in broad daylight, so am fine with concealed identities.

In addition, I would say the series is about war photographers, the way they witness the facts, which is not always the way they happen. they call it the world through their lenses for a reason. In the end, I think HBO opted for a more emotional approach rather than a factual one, yet offering first hand access into mostly uncharted territory. And contrary to what a user wrote, the South Sudan episode does show tribal scarring (7 minutes in). So much for accuracy.