When the artist and film director Johannes Putner stumbled on one of the old school knowledge that he had not heard for years on the Internet, she felt as a coincidence. He recently gathered with another old friend, a film director, Julian Vogel, with the interest of making a movie about the rise in tyranny around the world, and it happened that the friend who re -discovered on the Internet is now working as a health teacher who was deeply intertwined with remotely. The result of this fortunate re -rotation is “Light Soldiers”, which was shown to the world this week at Festival Festival Visions du réel.
“Light Soldiers” goes to David, also known as “Mister Raw”. The young man is part of the increasingly common “therapist” scene with bonds to the far right. While the directors included themselves at Commun’s House Slash Commune, they are particularly interested in one of the students of Mister Raw, Timo, who hopes to treat his mental illusions with nutritional supplements and fasting. What is happening to Timo in the context of the movie is, unfortunately, very opposite.
Talk to diverse Before the premiere of the film, Büttner says he has begun to notice growth in movements such as those led by David immediately after Covid, when there were many protests against government restrictions. “I realized that these forces were very present in our society,” he added. “I wanted to take a closer look. They draw pictures of utopian ideas and societies, which is historically compatible with the left, but these are great right -wing movements.”
This is when David found online, a man who went to the same elementary school and was very present in his childhood. When he approached David for the first time about the documentary, Putner was “amazed” about his openness to the idea. “This first meeting was really strange because we grew up together in some way, but it was deeply guaranteed in the science of vibration was very strange for me.”
VOGEL came to the project early and the two decided to address it through the observation approach, so the Camera deals with the camera, the büttner sound, so the crew will be small and unveiled as possible.
“This was the first time that I took a project in the aftermath of the people who lost their relatives in the horror of the right,” Vogel says, referring to the year 2023 “Trilogy Einzeltäter”. For this project, I suggested that Johannes follow the direct cinema approach from almost pure observation, as we try to mix and do not interact with our sponsors a lot. Because I came from the press, I felt that the debate with the theorists of the conspiracy was not the most exciting approach to know what this phenomenon is going on. ”
With permission from real visions
A large part of those first days was allocated to understanding the aesthetics of the project as well as developing confidence with their citizens. From the previous, Vogel noticed how David and his followers were constantly filming themselves on smartphones and tried to create a visual Kakovon, and often photographing their LCD screen screens. On the latter, the manager notes that although he participates in a large -scale socio -political views of David, they are linked to common themes such as vegetarian and interest in health.
“We talked about health and sports and will hold easy conversations, so it was fruitful dynamic,” Vogel adds. “They trusted us. We never lied to them. We have never said that we were entering them. We told them that we did not agree with the basics of their view of the world, but we were not involved in the discussion. It was a different approach from some of the media and other major presses in general.”
Of course, the duo was interested in the possibility of inflating the David message. “When you do this, you should automatically think if you give these people a platform,” Putner says. “We had a lot of continuous dialogue, Julian and I, on how their voices were not amplified. Our editor has really taken an important role in showing the truly hierarchical sequence system.”
One way to relieve focus on preaching David is to follow the story of Timo. This choice would change a lot of the film’s course due to the sudden and sudden death of Timo, which conveyed the managers to a storm of bureaucracy and emotional disorders. “Initially, everything seemed clear, but then we saw ourselves mediating in many difficult conversations, talking to the authorities and medical institutions during close communication with the Timo family and trying to help them in most situations,” Putner explained.
However, Vogel hopes that the “Soldiers of Light” will present some differences to discussions about the human side in the rise of the extreme right. He says: “We do not need this movie to warn us of how to climb fascism and tyranny around the world is bad and dangerous as we see with people like Trump and the President of Argentina) Javier Miley.” “What the film can do is give a deeper analysis of this phenomenon.”
He adds: “What we see in the movie is related to our daily world that lives in late neoliberal capitalism, where we all seek to be the best version of ourselves for a better performance, otherwise we may not be able to survive.” “The parallel that I see between my creative life and Timo is that David pushed Timo with a better future promise. This is something that I know well from films and art.
Karoline Henkel of Woodwateer Films is the world’s sales for “Soldiers of Light”.
