CINÉMA DU RÉEL 2020 - There Will Be No More Night

CIÉMA DU RÉEL 2020

There Will Be No More Night is a work of extreme discomfort. Scene after scene of brutality and mayhem unravels like some surreal second-rate combat flight simulation game from the 1980s. Eléonore Weber’s hypnotic and fascinating documentary explores a wide range of issues, particularly from a moral and societal viewpoint. This is portrayed through a compilation of military footage depicting war entirely through the lens of a military viewfinder. 

 The seemingly confidential video recordings shown in There Will Be No More Night are extracted and culled by Weber with the help from a French pilot named Pierre V. Pierre also professes his feelings while trying to help her decipher these deadly images. Weber captivates the audience with the ways in which she withholds and releases information. She uses a pertinent style of matching the images of desolate landscapes and ghostly silhouettes – which have been captured by thermal cameras – with her well-reasoned narration. Furthermore, she makes use of the pilots’ radio exchanges and interweaves them with multiple aerial views from helicopter cameras (shot by American, French and Britain troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan). By doing this, Weber steadily finds her way into the frame. She exposes the terrifying reality of some faraway countries where human life is cheap and trodden on by conflict and carnage; where anything could be wiped out in a matter of seconds by the omnipotent military forces. 

Weber’s documentary utterly mesmerizes the audience with its haunting imagery, given how every frame exudes an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia. This is due to the way the cameras operate. Similar to the eyes of a hawk that hovers above a gloomy landscape prowling on its prey, the cameras steadfastly fix their gaze upon the civilians’ contours, following them wherever they go. This is until the viewer slowly finds themselves attached to the anthracite world underneath them, a world full of dusk and smoke and moving shadows. Furthermore, no matter how far these people go or how hard they try to run away, once they are identified as the target, there is simply no escape. 

It should not take long for the viewer to notice a persistent eeriness that comes imperceptibly from the grainy, low-grade black and white presentation. This is accompanied by the pulsing sounds of the footage as well as the outbursts of gun-firing chaos enveloped in absolute monotony. Throughout its relatively short runtime, There Will Be No More Night will make viewers feel as though they have opened a secret door, one which shouldn’t have been opened in the first place. The result is as bone-chilling as ever.