Fragment 53

Roberto Intrieri

A very original reflection about life and death. How a life in war and caos force to live in the moment with no care of past and future and consequently no moral implications. A jump back at the beginning of the human species!

ADSOM

Its amazing the way these men lived and died for what they believed in. Obviously they wont talk about their own brutality against women and maybe children, but the psychology in all of this I find very interesting. I asked myself what it would be like to live so close to death.. This documentary answered that question, I guess it sets you free from fear & puts life in a more realistic perspective. I wish them peace.

Marinos Koutsomichalis

More than a list of atrocities, this documentary somehow manages to capture the subjective deeper essence of war, as experienced by a series of different personas. Not for the faint-hearted, evocative nevertheless.

PFL

The interviews with seven former Liberian "warriors" are certainly harrowing and troubling to watch. However I could not help feeling that the decision to allow these firsthand accounts to stand alone - with minimal effort to place them in the wider context of the Liberian civil wars themselves - was an unsatisfying one on the part of the directors.

Girolamo

A friend who has seen this documentary at a festival in nyc recommended it to me saying that it is a difficult film that doesn't come towards you, that you have to make an active effort to stay with it, but if you do, it pays off by giving you a cold, almost clinical insight in the existential mechanics of violence. After watching, I second this opinion, adding that the cinematography is excellent.

Matthew Chuckran

3.5. The cinematography was superb, the concept thoughtful, and the testimonies and subsequent rationale from the warriors haunting, but it lacked that certain something that really makes it stick with you. And maybe that's more on me. I kept expecting the fighters to break from their "well it was war" justifications, and they never really did which may speak volumes about the nature of the conflict itself.

Gerald Singer

Too much essentialism and symbolic imagery. Lacking political context or the grotesque of Oppenheimer. The close ups create a distance without any analytical dimension.

Quattro

Seven men, seven "warriors". Images of pure bestiality unfold as the interviews get deeper and deeper inside the human animal. Unfortunately it's not much more than a collection of testimonies, which barely fill an hour of film; as it is, it looks like Oppenheimer's The act of killing's little brother. Good cinematography.