Still from the animated film "Another Day of Life", photo: Platige Image
A story in which one of the world’s most important war reporters risks his life to accomplish a quasi suicidal mission, the story of a man searching for the truth about war, Ryszard Kapuścińki’s book Another Day of Life about the writer’s 1975 trip to Angola is being turned into a full length animated documentary
The introduction states
October 1975, Ryszard Kapuściński, journalist, has been travelling around Africa for 10 years, country after country, he describes independence movements and sends his reports to the Polish Press Agency. His work is dangerous and restless, but inspiring in the end – Kapuściński observes the demise of the colonial era and Africa’s battle for freedom. Unlike Western journalists, he looks at these events from the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain and well as from his own unique and personal vantage point.
Against the backdrop of the last months before Angola gained independence on November 11th 1975, according to Kapuściński himself, Another Day of Life is more than a book about war, it relates of "the feeling of being lost, the sense of uncertainty about what will happen to you. There were situations when people knew that they would not survive. And every day they said with relief: Oh, I have another day of my life behind me, another one awaits me".
Another Day of Life, the film, combines video footage of eye witnesses reminiscing about the events with 3D animation. The drawn reality allows the filmmakers to represent dreams, surrealistic details and poetry found in Kapuściński’s book, "thanks to the animation we can talk about war from the inside, about the fear and pain of people who took part in it", one of the film’s directors Raul de la Fuente comments.
Raul de la Fuente, one of the two director’s fascination for Africa began at the age of 15 when he met Kapuściński. He later travelled to Ethiopia, Mozambique and Angola, "Kapuściński’s books allowed my to beeter understand Africa, he was a sort of guide to me" he told the Polish Press Agency. In preparation for the filming of Another Day of Life, de la Fuente went on a trip tracing back Kapuściński’s route, "I went to Angola to find the people who still remembered him. The talk with commander Farrusco and others who remembered the Polish reporter enriched my reading of his reports from Angola, visiting the hotel rooms from which Kapuściński wrote the reports before sending them off to Poland, was fascinating" he adds.
Filming of the documentary part of the film starts in the Autumn of 2013 in Poland, Angola, Portugal and Cuba. Planned to come out in 2015 and directed by Spanish filmmaker Raul de la Fuente and author of short animated films Paths of Hate and City of Ruins Polish filmmaker Damian Nenow, the Another Day of Life is a Polish Spanish German and Belgian coproduction.
Sources: culture.pl
Editor: Marta Jazowska