Le carnet de Sara

El cuaderno de Sara follows the story of a spanish lawyer that tracks down her sister, an aid worker, to a violent zone in the congo.

Once the film begins, you are reminded an awful lot of times that africa is a violent and complex place, very different to Madrid. Our main character seems completely incapable of walking the streets without getting lost or fade helplessly into the chaos, finding comfort only in white-abundant places like hotels and bars. I understand that this is the point of the character, she being naive and ignorant, but the movie ends with her being almost as ignorant as the beginning.

The movie has an abundance of opportunities to come to a profound realization, the whole arc of her sister revolves around this fact, but evades a closure for easier subjects. Cute selfies with black kids are nonstop, as are many other aid-tourism behaviors, and even when the conflict it depicts is similar to the reality of not just the congo but many mineral -rich places in Africa, they are never tied to existent names or events. Acting is Ok, and some shots are spectacular, but that is a cheap ploy to simply ignore the failure that is the story.

If you are really interested in learning about the subject, and in my opinion everyone should, you should watch Beasts of No Nation and The Siege of Jadotville both from Netflix. The later, even when is the account of a white group of soldiers fighting on behalf of the UN in the congo, does more to bring the actual causes and consequences of our thirst for minerals than this movie.

A tale of a Moronic Spanish woman whose idiotic quest to find her less bright sister in the war torn Congo leaves in her wake countless bodies of friends and foes because she has the gray matter of a marsupial and always places herself and others in harms way .. her continuing propensity to make the wrong descision defies credulity.

The story had a chance to be enthralling. It missed, but not badly. A story of a disastrous Central African drug/diamond/or in this case minerals human tragedy is compelling on its own. This movie also tries to throw in a sibling re-unification thread, which I found lacking. The story of the sister and her young African guide/translator was the star interaction of the movie. However; as with so many movies, the overuse of dramatic shootings and narrow escapes becomes nearly comical. Our heroine is shot at a thousand times, is surrounded numerous times, and ambushed a few more times for good measure. We even get car chases and plane disasters. It was as if the director wanted to make "James Bond goes to an African civil war." I still liked the movie. The acting was solid and they did capture the feel of living in Africa in the 21st Century.

I read another review, where the reviewer made a good point. It seems like the Western world needs someone the audience can root for. Someone they see and can feel and relate to. That person is our female protagonist in this case. And while that is more than a fair point, try not to let this get your focus of the main issues of the movie.

Genocide, hunger, murder, rape and a general abuse of power. But this does not give us a look into the higher powers who "control" this. We get to the ground, down and dirty and go on the look for our sister. Well the sister of the main actress that is. She was missing and now it seems like there is a glimmer of hope. Hope they can reunite and go back "home". But on her way, she finds a new friend. A friend that is troubled, but a friend is useful to her. Someone you should not judge prematurely or even with other moral standards than the ones he has to obey and live by. This may sound weird, but once you've seen it, you'll get it. A really well thought of movie, that takes its time (maybe a bit too long at times), but is really worth your time, if you have the faintest interest in the subject

For someone who has lived in the Congo, this story is as real as it gets. Some reviews find certain events unrealistic and far fetched but they have probably never been in a jungle in Africa