Another Day of Life

This movie is like two movies in one. Part of it is a documentary about the Angolan Civil War. The other part is an animated film about the same subject, following Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski reporting on the war in the 1970s. The first thing that I need to talk about is the animation. It is animated in that rotoscoped cell-shaded CGI style similar to A Scanner Darkly or the Love, Death & Robots short Fish Night. Normally, I hate animation that is trying to look realistic, but I didn't mind it here. There are many sequences of animation in this movie that just couldn't possibly work as well in live-action. The colours are really nice and it is intense! It actually feels like you're in the middle of a war! The story I found very interesting and the intercut documentary footage of people who actually knew the main character in real life and are characters in the movie themselves was really cool and helped with my understanding of the story and the history behind the film. The acting was really good as well and I really cared about the characters. Overall, if you like animation or historical war movies, you should watch this movie. It's very short, but very good!

It's always good to watch something about Angola and about the devastating civil war. We need more and more. This is however, a bit underwhelming.

First, it's incredibly one-sided. For a work based on a journalist piece you would expect something that would recognize that there isn't "good or bad" in wars. We the purists vs the evil is something that simple doesn't happen and didn't happen in Angola at all. The MPLA killed, at least, as many as the other movements but that's not the impression you take from this. It would be good to show a bit about the other sides and their motivations (no, it was not only the American capitalism 😑).

Second, the story had a lot of potential but I just felt that it was not told in a compelling way. Yes, there are good parts. Yes, the bits about Carlota are emotional. Yes, some real testimonials are important. However, I felt that these episodes could have been told in a much more interesting way.

Third, I didn't feel this Angolan enough. You feel that this is made mainly for international consumption. People should have seen more from Angola; could have heard more about their music - so important during war times -; more about their traditions; at least, hear a bit more of Portuguese with the Angolan accent or some Angolan local languages.

The animation is good, it's always great to recognise some places and to tell about real stories (even if I'm not sure this format was the ideal). However, I feel this was much more a missed opportunity than anything else.

Rizsard Kapuscinsky is one of the most important reporters of the XX Century, and someone who witnessed some of the biggest war crimes in Europe, Latin America and Africa. His books and reportages are ineludible documents to understand all the interests behind war, invasions and geopolitics. It is not surprise that any American viewer say nothing about this animated documentary. It is very probably that American audiences doesn't like at all what Kapuscinski has written, and the way he is portrayed on here. Very far from the way are portayed reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the Watergate affair. In that case, there is no ideology. America film and history are made to believe that what both Washington Post reporters it is what investigative journalism is all about. This is, for say the least, an arrogant point of view. America is not the world, nor even the center of the word. Is one pole. The other is Russia, and the former USSR.

This animated documentary involves both poles from the Cold War, and is not, and cannot be by any means precisely a fruit of objectivity. But, as Kapuscinski put it in many other of his reporter works, and is put it that way on here, his job is to give word to those are condemned to be forgotten, those who usually die amidst oblivion and never are listen, those who are needed and poor, just like Jesus say on his preach, which not means I compared Jesus with Kapuscinski.

Animation is awesome on this documentary, the way are blended original footage and pictures of many of the depicted characters is just amazing, and shows how American power is capable of the worst atrocities only to support its foreing policy of destruction and empoverity entire countries. The Angola conflict is one of those defeites that American doesn't want to remember, after Vietnam. Of course, it would be naïve to consider that this documentary support openly Russian interventionism, since they abandon too Angola, only to see how Cuba took their place in the conflict and made it to succeed.

There is no such a thing called neutral interventionism, but Kapuscinski knows that he has to be the voice of those who hasn't and seem condemned to be crashed by any outside political power. "This is the way I look" is a frase repeated several times in the documentary, as if little people raise his voice to be remeber in the future and not fall into oblivion. That's the very point on what Kapuscinski was doing all his life, and for that will be remembered as one of the biggest and more influential reporters of the last century.

A very impressive documentary, a must see to unveil our prejudices about interventionism.

An animated film, spliced in parts, with real documentary film of interviews with important subjects within the animated tale. Rizsard Kapuscinsky was an exceptionally gifted, brave and heroic reporter. He reported the facts and truth of the corrupt cold war slaughterhouse being waged by America and Russia in the African backyard of Angola. A war, which this film bio informs us of, where both sides - the MPLA and the NFLA - murdered millions and committed despicable atrocities!

The animated sections are in the English language and the actual documentary pieces are in native tongues; but there are subtitles available so that you know what is said. It makes for a gripping and most thoroughly interesting watch and, is presented in an almost comic style very polished looking animated style. There is no one sided reporting as it tells the tale of the misery caused by both side and both superpowers; a misery that endured for the Angolan people for 27 years.

Very good movie on the Angola civil war, a subject not often explored in film but full of possibilities as most wars are. But this is a different kind of movie as it uses animation to tell its story while also taking the Band of Brothers way of storytelling, by having the real people who were involved in it say in their own words what happened. It is mostly animation but with live action images scattered throughout, resulting in a very engaging experience. Technically I found the movie breathtakingly beautiful, using a style of animation that I don't particularly like but making the most out of it, creating some beautiful imagery and a realism that I wasn't expecting. Congratulations to the duo directing the movie, really well done. And now I must delve a bit on the political side of this movie. As a Portuguese this is a story that resonates a lot with us because it was a huge deal in our country, full of changes during that period of time. I must address another reviewer here that didn't like the way it made the MPLA look like saints, and he didn't like the movie because of it, he made a lot of valid points but I don't think this movie is as black and white as he makes it seem, sure it is told through the eyes of MPLA supporters, but there are a lot of clues to show that they were no saints, for example, when they are talking about the brother or comrade way of addressing a soldier, they say it's a coin flip and they both will kill you if you address them in the wrong manner, and by the end, the Artur character is extremely disappointed with the way the war turned out, where all their ideals and principals were never upheld, calling into question the whole war, which again shows that the MPLA were not very different from UNITA. And this brings me to our main character, Ryszard Kapuscinski. He was a very well known Polish journalist and writer and upon some research I found that he was not very consensual, as he often took real stories and romanticized them so much to the point of being total inventions. By adapting one of his works the filmmakers made an excellent decision of using the before mentioned technique of mixing animation, to tell the Kapuscinski story, and real live footage, to act as kind of a fact checker about what is being said. Highly recommended.