Review: Open City London Documentary Festival Feat. Position Among The Stars, Cocaine Unwrapped + Blood In The Mobile

“Opening minds, eyes and doors in the city of London” – that was the tagline of the glorious Open City London Documentary Festival. Held at the University College of London (UCL), and showing 160 stunning and unique films over four days (June 16-19), I was simply drowning in a pool of on screen gold.

And I mean gold.

I managed to catch 11 documentaries over two of the days – easily done as the diverse festival films showcasing “the stories that matter from around the world” were screened simultaneously across the central London campus and ranged from being 19 minutes to nine hours long.

Yet the first few seconds of the Open City opening ceremony were enough to impress with a top quality film worthy of an Academy Award; Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Position Among The Stars – the third part of a trilogy after The Eye of the Day and The Shape of The Moon - followed a striving and animated Indonesian family over 12 years as they battle corruption, poverty, religious disputes, gambling addiction and the generation gap from the slums of Jakarta. The “revolutionary” (literally, unbelievable) camera work, seamless ever-evolving family dynamics portrayed by the film, and the ability to make the audience laugh, feel awkward and cry within a tight 30 minutes makes this documentary a must-see.



One and all can relate to the story with quotes such as “We have to eat first… school comes second”, “No government in the world takes care of it’s people” and “Your possessions take possession of you” resonating in societies across the globe.

Other honourable mentions in my Open City London Doc Fest run down go to Cocaine Unwrapped and Blood In The Mobile – both gritty, hard hitting and jam packed with knowledge; a quality described by Open City Director, Michael Stewart, as “not an accomplishment. Knowledge is always a process that can be developed through such things as documentary film… which itself is always evolving, ever-changing and unpredictable.”

In the case of Rachel Seifert’s Cocaine Unwrapped it was definitely a shocking documentary about an ever-expanding problem – the corruption and destruction surrounding the cocaine industry; from the 11 million Westerners currently using the drug, to the misunderstood and at times exploited sources of the white stuff.



Rachel’s film took us around the world, as we heard from reps in Bolivia, and the farmers innocently and legally growing coca leafs (an ingredient in cocaine), yet losing out because of others either wanting to take their crops to grow cocaine, or burn them to prevent them being used to make the drug. We also got to hear from the female dealers in Ecuador, imprisoned and suffering from the social inequality notions that come with being involved with cocaine. We dropped right into the violence breaching from drug trafficking conflict in Mexico; a country which has seen 37,000 drug dealing related deaths since 2006. And we saw how cocaine powerhouse Colombia is still going strong despite the millions invested by the US in the ‘war on drugs’ (declared by President Nixon back in 1971). We even got snippets from beyond the South American side of the thin white line, with perspectives from consumers in London (some of which didn’t care where their drugs originated from), to a reformed convicted dealer in Baltimore who, despite appealing, has seen rapists and paedophiles released before him. The prisoner stated: “You can get over an addiction… but you can never get over a conviction”

“Drug policy is not black and white” said director Seifert in the post-screening panel discussion, which is why her film which blasted and exposed a hole in the grey matter that is the failed war on drugs, is so powerful. It leaves the audience seeking solutions, and the key governments and influencers in the world with their pants down.

My final Open City two thumbs up goes to Blood In The Mobile – directed by Frank Piasecki Poulsen, who honed in on the exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo and their natural resources; which are being drained by bodies across the world amidst the ongoing, long standing civil war in the African country. Poulsen uses mobile phone mega-cooperation Nokia as a target, one of MANY (along with laptop and other mobile phone merchandisers) who use the metal coltan in their products – a mineral most readily found in the mines of eastern Congo. We follow the mission to try and track down where exactly Nokia’s sources lay, with the camera shooting from their headquarters, to geologists’ laboratories, right to the mines, impoverished miners and hostile heart of eastern Congo. Having done volunteer work in the DRC back in 2008, let’s just say this staggering piece of documentary cut deep:



These are the “stories that matter”? With all the numbing, dumbed down, directionless rub one can scope through on the saturated box, the three I’ve flagged, along with the other 157 Open City films, really did rejuvenate one’s faith in raw, honest and good storytelling. Michael Stewart called the festival “a celebration of documentary film, modelled on the London Film Fest”, and one that “shows respect for the authenticity of ‘real stories’, the people involved, and the people watching.”

To all filmmakers and film lovers, in London and beyond – Open City had the winning formula – no fabricated edutainment, just the truth, and with that came impact, and inspiration. Open your eyes here: www.opencitylondon.com

This was also published on the Media Trust Community Channel