CPH:DOX 2021: KILLING ESCOBAR, RAISING A SCHOOL SHOOTER, A MAN AND A CAMERA, CANNON ARM AND THE ARCADE QUEST

Due to ongoing complications of the coronavirus, CPH:DOX 2021 was the second consecutive virtual edition for the beloved Danish documentary festival. Nevertheless, the programmers did not skimp on the quality of global storytelling, offering a rich programme of documentaries that entertained, provoked thoughts, and continue to linger in the imagination. Here are my reviews of four eclectic films I saw at the festival.

Killing Escobar (David Whitney)

Killing Escobar will be appreciated because, luckily, there’s still plenty of appetite for analysing every pixel of the bigger Pablo Escobar picture. In actuality, this documentary merely feels like a Narcos bonus feature.

Filmmaker David Whitney recognises as much, as he exploits the commercial potential of this untold story by creating a familiarity for its target audience, recognising the appeal of the scripted format and thus employing recreations to depict the story of Peter McAleese, a Scottish mercenary who was hired by a Colombian drug cartel, alongside his friend Dave Tompkins, to kill the World’s Greatest Outlaw when his cocaine trafficking operation was at its peak.

The recreations of his journey in the valleys of Colombia are finely crafted, bearing a tone and aesthetic similar to that of Narcos (and an actor playing McAleese who looks distractingly too much like Kevin James). After opening in media res with a moment when McAleese thought he was going to die in the middle of a jungle during his hunt for Escobar, the talking heads who orient us in the history are retired DEA agents Javier Peña and Steve Murphy, who were respectively portrayed by Pedro Pascal and Boyd Holbrook in the hit Netflix series.

However, as much as the film wants to focus on killing Escobar, it emerges as a wider character study of McAleese, an ex-SAS soldier with some violent stories to share about living in Glasgow and fighting in Angola. Ironically, these stories are wherein the film’s storytelling value lies, as they are much more fascinating than the Escobar mission which, ultimately, amounted to a failure. Killing Escobar is superbly assembled but one can’t help feeling that it exists to capitalise on the popularity of Narcos above anything else. The primary focus on the titular expedition is understandable but perhaps misplaced, for the glimpses into the subject’s life outside of Colombia are much richer than his quest there.

Killing Escobar is awaiting a US release. It is available now in the UK via iPlayer and virtual cinemas.

Raising a School Shooter (Frida Barkfors, Lasse Barkfors)

I’m not sure how many movies need to be about the terribly frequent and uniquely American tragedy of a school shooting before real change is enforced but I would hope this is one of the last ones. Raising a School Shooter is a forceful documentary, one that examines the profound trauma of parents whose children committed the unspeakable acts.

Twenty years removed from the events, co-directors Frida and Lasse Barkfors open up a space for parents including Jeff Williams, father of Charles Andrew Williams, who perpetrated a shooting at Santana High School in 2001, and Sue Klebold, mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, to reflect on the impact of their children’s unimaginable actions. It still feels impossible for them to process what happened.

Even the use of language proves to be difficult when discussing the history, and Ms. Klebold poignantly speaks about ever allowing herself to feel happiness ever again. A potent sequence captures her sitting down with Coni Sanders, the daughter of Dave Sanders, a teacher who was murdered during the mass shooting. It emphasises the need for empathy towards indirect victims and how establishing dialogue is vital to the healing process.

This documentary doesn’t offer straightforward answers and doesn’t engage with institutional elements, focusing entirely on the parents in their tranquil domesticity with a bare formal approach. Just listening to the cracks in their voices speaks volumes of their trauma. Voice-overs of somber interviews underscore the quietly powerful footage. It’s all very tactfully handled, as the directors choose not to do anything to affect the images or the audio from their natural states, spare in their approach to interviews and employing music, and use a small crew with handheld cameras. They capture emotional wounds in a manner no talk show or news coverage could achieve.

Raising a School Shooter is currently seeking US/UK distribution.

A Man and a Camera (Guido Hendrikx)

In the gaming world, there’s this term, the “walking simulator”. It’s used to describe an evolution of the point and click genre in the context of 3D animation, to the point of where it’s become the move and click genre. Such a game is called a walking simulator since walking is the core mechanic – you walk around and click a button to scan a clue in the environment to gain context, information and advance the story. No other actions are required, or even possible.

Guido Hendrikx’s A Man and a Camera is a pure cinematic form of the walking simulator – hell, it even looks like one. Shot from a first-person perspective, we follow the man with his camera (of course) as he knocks on random house doors and keeps his camera pointed at the respondents without saying a single word or reacting in any way. The vast majority are baffled – like an NPC in a game, they either show frustration with him standing idle with a camera for so long or simply respond by staying as stoic as him.

We begin to wonder, how is he approaching them? There’s no indication on if he’s smiling, frowning or holding a neutral expression, nor is there a hint on whether he’s making direct eye contact or staring at them through his camera lens. After twenty minutes of awkward interactions, I began to think, when’s the other shoe going to drop? And the truth is, I’m unsure if it did. This documentary presents a puzzle of commentary on the human condition.

What could have been a glorified prank YouTube video is rendered into something more challenging. It begins with an interesting formal approach – there’s no music to manipulate the images, no quick-cuts to create humour, and the juxtaposition of the same circumstance, again and again, creates a deeper meaning about human connection and how we perceive someone with a lens. The perseverance and commitment of this filmmaker, not knowing how he’ll be received, pays off rather well in narrative terms. It all carries the feeling of a horror film, something like Patrick Brice‘s Creep, an eerie sensation accentuated when he’s invited into the homes of willing participants. An intriguingly unusual endeavor.

A Man and a Camera is currently seeking US/UK distribution.

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest (Mads Hedegaard)

In Copenhagen, a man wants to set a world record – Kim “Cannon Arm” Købko attempts to be the first in the world to play an arcade machine for 100 consecutive hours. His chosen game is Gyruss, a classic shoot ‘em up. The film’s premise bears an immediate similarity to The King of Kong – whose protagonist Billy Mitchell plays an ancillary role in contextualising this story – but this is more about cooperation than competition, as Kim’s efforts are aided by his friends at the ’80s themed Bip Bip Bar.

When we open the film, we learn that the man is still striving towards the goal despite a few attempts. For now, though, he can claim the record for the quietest guy in the world, speaking about 255 words (on a good day) compared to the human average of 16000. It only makes sense that director Mads Hedegaard narrates the story. Not just due to Kim’s quietude but also because he’s crucial to his subject’s life as a pre-existing friend. A friend’s perspective is key to understanding how Kim will reach his goal. for the support of the Bip Bip Bar network is the bedrock on which Kim facilitates his dreams.

We see Kim’s friends in strategy meetings discussing health concerns and mulling over ways in which Kim can navigate an extreme gaming session whilst keeping his senses intact. They audit his test runs, monitoring optimal amounts of nap time and how long the game can keep running in an idle state whilst maintaining a sufficient amount of lives for Kim to continue his 100-hour playthrough. One such idea is to keep him on a slow-moving treadmill but it proves to be pretty outlandish. It’s a fascinating dynamic, no matter what ideas are cooked up.

What also makes this film so differently fascinating to The King of Kong is the symbolic idea of superheroes – Billy Mitchell’s cheating scandal undercuts his status in the gaming world, giving Kim Cannon Arm a chance to shine thanks to contemporary live streaming services in which audiences can monitor his authentic efforts and witness the truth.

The expectation for such a film – especially when it comes to capturing the big moment of a guy playing an arcade machine for 100 hours – is that it must be visually creative to match its subject matter. Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest is as stylish as a documentary can be. 80’s graphics and a synth-heavy score complement the arcade aesthetic, in addition to effective experiments with fades, split screens, rewinds, and other tools on After Effects. My favourite is the spinning graphic of Gyruss that overlays Kim’s head when we observe him napping during his allotted time frame. Wonderfully cinematic with a beautiful message of teamwork at its centre, Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest is an entertaining look at the process of a gaming marathon.

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest has been picked up for release by Cargo Film & Releasing.

Are you attending this year’s CPH:DOX Film Festival? Let us know in the comments below!