Stockholm Film Festival

Rendered through Ivan Strasburg's handheld camera and Paul Greengrass' brave and flawless direction, the cruel, chaotic events in Derry, Northern Ireland on January 30th 1972 - known as the ''Bloody Sunday'' - become an emotional ride through a dark episode of human nature in the 20th century. In Cinema Verite style, and through effective deterministic elliptical fadeouts, Bloody Sunday brilliantly conveys the building tensions and confusions in both the civil rights movement and the British military on that single day. While not focusing on specific characters, Greengrass instead settles on the event itself, wisely avoiding the traps of dramatization. Although the fragmentary style provides the spectator with striking, direct impressions, it nevertheless diminishes the entirety of the course of events. Travelling so close to documentary, Bloody Sunday tends to obliviate the subjectivity behind the work. Still, its impact is nothing if not powerful. In the midst of chaos, between the bloody corpses and the incomprehensible faces of the British Army, the poetic image of a mourning girlfriend's resolute face conveying suppressed anger and sorrow, seems to carry the true experience of the film and history. Niklas Salmose

Medverkande

James Nesbitt, Tim Pigott-Smith, Nicholas Farrel, Gerard McSorley, Kathy Kiera Clarke

Producent

Mark Redhead

Manus

Paul Greengrass

Foto

Ivan Strasburg

Musik

Dominic Muldoon

Talat språk

English

 

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