Another Day of Life

1975. Portugal is letting go of its colonial empire and Angola becomes independent. As independence day approaches three organisations are fighting each other in the country and weapons are coming in from outside. Ryszard Kapuściński is in Luanda for the Polish news agency. Everyone is leaving the city; the houses empty, the belongings go into crates, and a city of wooden boxes rises at the port. Kapuściński decides to go south. The road to the front is closed and those who go do not come back. A commander lets him through. He will write what he sees on the road, but he does not know what his writing will do to whom. Damian Nenow and Raúl de la Fuente direct. It is a co-production of Poland, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Hungary. The source is Kapuściński's book of the same name, in which he describes the three months he spent in Angola. The form is mixed; most of the narrative is animation, with real interviews and archive footage set into it. The interviews were made with witnesses living today; people we see in the animation speak to camera. The film screened at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and had its world premiere there. The matter it treats is the impartiality of the journalist; Kapuściński does not watch the event, he goes into it, and there is a price. The animation is not realistic; the colours are deliberately harsh and the war scenes stylised. Its limit is structure; the moves between the two forms break the narrative and the pace drops. Who it is for: viewers who like animation for adults and narratives of war reporting. Who it is not for: it is in pieces, the subject heavy, and the ending bitter.