Manakamana

Eleven minutes spent facing a stranger may seem like a long time. One might see it as the bare minimum of documentary filmmaking: a camera on a tripod, someone opposite, and nothing else. Manakamana is something else entirely; it is a challenge, a test of the limits of direct cinema and the viewer's patience.

It all begins gently, with a pleasant cable-car ride through a sublime landscape. The setup is strict, relentless, and places us quite literally face to face with the other. Here, there is no escape: we are together, trapped in the cabin, several dozen meters above the ground. Getting out is impossible—if we do, we die. The scenery passes by, the horizon shifts, but nothing frees us from this hold. We are compelled to stay there, facing someone we did not choose, a stranger we do not understand. Someone who makes too much noise—or not enough. Who takes up too much space, eats when it is forbidden, believes in things that escape us. Someone unsettling—and yet strangely familiar.

Through boredom and discomfort, attention gradually shifts. We latch onto a detail, a smile or a glance, a furtive gesture. Little by little, something is revealed: this other person is not so foreign to us after all, and we grow attached. It took the cramped space of a cabin and what felt like an interminable stretch of time to understand it. This slow closeness becomes our chance.

Emanuel Licha
Filmmaker and teacher