La larga noche (the long night)
2008 · 15m · España
Directed by Ferran Brooks
Genres: documentary, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A documentary about the disasters of war from a human perspective — from war veterans to damaged civilians — portraying the current reality of the disasters of the Iraq war, but of all wars.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A solemn, consensus-pleasing war doc that refuses to provoke—it's formally competent mourning, but where's the argument? The premise of 'all wars are bad, seen through human suffering' is exactly the kind of safe universalism that makes documentaries disappear.
Brooks situates this firmly within the post-Iraq documentary tradition, but the formal restraint—letting testimony and archive breathe without editorializing—shows a curator's hand; the melancholic pacing honors both the veterans and the form's lineage of bearing witness.
What elevates this beyond another war testimony compilation is the decision to hold on silence and spatial emptiness between voices—that negative space becomes the film's argument about what war actually leaves behind, more eloquent than any montage could manage.