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May 05, 2009

How to tell imperfect stories: Reporter

Posted by Elaisha Stokes at 12:45 PM ET

Before I was a blogger for This, I worked briefly as a media trainer in Zambia. The experience was challenging at the best of times and devastating at the worst, but overall I think I emerged a better person, and certainly gained a stronger understanding of the complex nature of international aid work. Suffice to say, sending your dollars to Africa isn't enough. Reporter, now screening at Hot Docs, attempts to answer some of these questions through the experiences of Nicholas Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times.

Reporter unfolds in the DRC, where decades of conflict have left four million civilians dead and countless more displaced. Like most conflict journalists, Kristof spends the film searching for that one individual story that can summarize an entire war and resonate with the readers. His goal: to make you care, which as he puts it, is almost impossible in an age where empathy is dead.

Reporter is Eric Daniel Metzgar third film, and without a doubt, his most commercial. Executive Produced by Ben Affleck and premiering at Sundance, the film still retains the tender appeal of Metzgar's earlier films. Unlike many of today's big budget documentarians, Metzgar directs, edits and photographs his own films. And while techies everywhere decry the shaky camera a one-man-filming-band can often produce, the result is a tender, intimate portrayal of the realities of international conflict reporting that goes beyond a superficial treatment and gets to the heart of the matter. It's like Sherman's March meets Apocalypse Now, and it totally works.

What sets Reporter apart from the pack of aid-agency documentaries released in the last few years (Shake hand with the Devil comes to mind,) is the imperfect characters. Metzgar's chilling commentary portrays Kristof not as a super-human being, or even a saint, but as a complex individual who sometimes detaches himself from the horror of his victims stories to get the job done. The dynamics between the characters is tense, anxious, and utterly real, making Reporter one of the docs to watch this festival season.

Reporter screens Wednesday May 6th at 4:30 PM at the Royal Ontario Museum

More entries on: Hot Docs festival

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