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| Add to My AOL, MyYahoo, Google, Bloglines Add to: My AOL, MyYahoo, Google, Bloglines Posted Jun 4th 2007 4:30PM by Kim Voynar It's a noble enough idea: get five directors to each direct a short film highlighting a problem in an underdeveloped area of the world, then put them together into one feature-length film. Kind of like , only darker and considerably more depressing (but hey, what would a film festival be without a slew of depressing documentaries to remind us of how mundane the problems of our modern lives are when compared to war, rape, child abductions, and obscure-but -deadly diseases that no one at the big pharmaceutical companies seems to care about?) It is a decent idea, to be sure, and producer Javier Bardem's heart was in the right place in conceiving of the film , but somehow the end result is five films that feel disconnected from each other in spite of their common theme of addressing the "invisible" people of society -- the disenfranchised, the victims of long wars, the poverty-stricken residents of slums and remote villages.
Part of the problem with the film is that several of the segments feel like they were shot for the kind of late-night infomercials that appeal to well-to-do insomniacs to donate money to their various causes. I kept expecting Sally Struthers to show up on screen, guiding us from short film to short film while holding a malnourished Third World child in her arms. Documentaries, even ones that highlight relevant social causes, still need to tell a coherent story that draws us in, makes us care about the people or causes we're learning about.
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