No Man's Land

Captivating and uncomfortable, the venomous images of Salomé Lamas' film establish the confession of a single man as the exclusive vector of a long journey into the dark and secret meanders of history.

Immersion in the unapologetic experience of a craftsman of war and execution, the filmmaker captures the disturbing words of a simple soldier who became a mercenary, a murderer and a prisoner, as the political situation changed.

But the painful question of representation and evocation of the impenetrable trauma is gradually replaced by an unexpected collision between fact and personal truth, lived memory and fantasy. From then on, in the shelter of a stripped and isolated, almost bootleg device, the reliability and identity of the unique protagonist are more and more questioned.

Between narrative leaps, ellipses and unspoken words, Salomé Lamas' film takes a look at the unbearable criminal violence of democracies in a disturbing and unusual way. But it also expresses an essential questioning of the power and authority of the documentary process on the spectator, whose active role here aims at questioning the ethics and the flaws of the genre.

Confined in a single room, the protagonist and the spectator form a filmed relationship, between the one who tells the story of reality and the one, at a distance, who interprets what he sees and hears.

Terence Chotard
Filmmaker