04/08/2024

Infamously, in the digital era people can consider their relations to other populations closer and yet there is a striking lack of understanding. We follow the narrator's words of him coming back home, as the first day of the cancel movement started to heave. The already blurred lines between truth and lies, as have also been a focal point in the past DokuFest editions in 2019, now, 5 years after, we saw a documentary discussing the same crucial points on how audiences and population perceive to be truthful. 

In the aftermath of realizing what is right and wrong, there lies a fine line of considering assumptions as perceived and felt truths. Following up on the Trump supporting rallies, Black Lives Matter Movement, protests addressing police brutality in America and the contrary, the blue uniforms supporters, who switch their political reliance from one side to another, there is indeed a very thinly and densely layered context in which these realities coexist while bringing a misconception on the reality of the facts. 

The most exotic approach is to radicalize how the stances of populations and protesters can be perceived. We continue to dig in as viewers into the pharmaceutical industrialization and corporatization, ensuring gun usage and stopping gun violence, many of the interviewees seem to use the same words to ensure the rights of the citizens, but the methods and approaches stand violently apart. 

Raising important questions and inviting us to reflect on what actually resides in the rights of the citizens, and if the old phrasing is true: your rights end when mine begins, we can actually see the conflicts eroding the ability to build dialogue, and emulsify the necessity for disparity and distance. 

This documentary not only follows up with the actual massive and distinctive reactions of citizens taking strong stances for what they believe in, but it also speaks to how these groups of protesters think about one another while creating narratives on narratives, while protests, and raising the voice to articulate societal problems in a civilized matter, seem to be endless and sometimes useless. But people do persevere. The American population depicted in the documentary represent the people who use their voices in an amplified way while using the tools of expression even though directed in opposite directions. Through massive protesters signs, commercialized signs and merch, obeying and disobeying the methods of gathering, the voices of reaction do not find a middle ground. 

In the absurdity and irony of narratives and figures of speech pointing in the same direction, the context and meaning entertain ideas of extremism and their subsequent depictions. The documentary, directed by Mitch McCabe, lets the viewer decide on what they want to make of the context and the reality as the interviewers and narrators remain impartial as film characters but having a definitive objective in their own realities. 

We urge you to not miss this excellent depiction of what becomes with citizens and free nations, when the political and administrative systems remain trapped in the ideas of liberty and lose sight of what brings people at the same table without any prejudice towards one another and discuss the future. 

By: Blerina Kanxha

Photo: Tughan Anit