Danger Zone
For her second feature film, the Polish director Vita Drygas, who is originally from Lithuania, tackles the ugly trade of war tourism. This great documentary film has extreme focus on the trauma of the communities who live in the hart of conflicts right from the beginning. In addition it addresses the misconceptions that the West has about wars in countries like Syria or Somalia which seem to be so far away.
The new faces are introduced in a flashback collage of over a period of a few years and from diverse locations. In contrast to the refugees and local war fighters, their faces are named and their tales recounted. Eleonora is an Italian immigrant settled in Las Vegas, AJ is American business sphere young gentleman, and Andrew is a British man, a war tourism veteran. Also, Rick the contractor who takes people to dangerous places is introduced. Some of them find solace in the fact that they were in real combat and fought in the various battles of the world.
The director captures the extreme risk-takers and their followers using an observational style. In addition, she employs self-shot materials of the participants, which adds to the genuineness of the story even more. The editing work by Milenia Fiedler and Kamil Niewinski is effective and presents the viewers with pictures depicting the level of intensity experienced by Andrew and his companions. Images of poverty and destruction of the unfortunate are powerful in contradistinctive to the apparent leisure of the tourists.
Danger Zone is well-placed in the context of this culture as it not only stresses the aim of war as unfortunate in all its scope but also discusses barbarism that most of the nations seem to endorse today with pride. However, the director does a reasonable job in attempting to strip away the nonsensical lure of war tourism by so many times cutting to the outside world and providing a view that is easily impossible to ignore in a context of such rampant warfare.
This makes it easier for one to view the conflict, and the exotic tourists stereotype seeing them as caricatures that do not care about what happens to the people in the conflict zones. However, the ever persistent camera does part of these ‘tourists’, in which they show undue concern for the suffering peoples. A particularly touching moment occurs in Eleonora’s segment when she seems to bond rather closely with Somaya, one of the Afghan hosts.
The viewer is forced almost against their will by the magnitude of the topic at hand, the naive westerners, and a camera that, while at ease, does not flinch from the horror of war. The tension is always alive in the screen especially as Drygas is training the lens on the changing faced of the tourists being filmed.
In the beginning, they seemed to want to see something different, something wild. However, after a decent period spent in the conflict regions, their faces begin to take a certain strained look that is definitely not cheerful. The sheer abandonment with which they voluntarily make themselves is awful and they at least for an instant do feel the intensity of their holidays.
Danger Zone comes at the right and appropriate time and oversteps boundaries of cultures, scrutinizing the intricate phenomena of global war tourism and its impact on local populations. It’s an immersive piece of work that enables people to face the realities of never ending fighting through a storyline that ought to be fictional but is, in fact, true of many places on earth.
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