Page - 149 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

extreme experience. One of the three, Pepe Mujica, later became president of Uruguay. Both films depict with great precision – in different times as well as against diverse cultural and political backgrounds – the destructive impact of arbitrary state violence upon citizens. On the aesthetic level, the body of the victims is presented as the field where the brutal annihilation of the prisoner is performed on both the physical and symbolic levels, with the camera often very close to the naked, wounded bodies of the protagonists. The bare body, therefore, becomes a strong filmic metaphor for the fragility of the human be- ing facing uncontrolled state violence. The drama Peeterloo (Mike Leigh, GB/US 2018) represents a different way of dealing with the issue of state violence. The focus lies on the massacre of peo- ple who were demostrating for democracy and women rights in Manchester in 1819. Hopes for change and equality were drowned in blood as the conservative forces retained power. Although the film is presented as a historic drama, it is striking because of its relevance today (as if intended for contemporary readers of the newspaper the Guardian, which was founded following this massacre) and its implicit reflection on the fragility of democracy. As in La noche de 12 años, it shows that institutional violence will be overcome and democracy established. While these films approach the destructive impact of state violence from the perspective of the victims, The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, GB/IE/US 2018) scrutinises the subtle rules of power and the use of violence for establishing hierarchies in an all-female historic drama set in early 18th-century England at the court of Queen Anne. The film is impressive for the acting, its costumes and camera. It makes a clear statement about the capacity of mastering [sic] and controlling cruelty as a powerful means of (female) power. VIOLENCE IN WAR, TERRORISM AND GENOCIDE The annihilating power of violence in war is analysed in the Syrian production Yom Adaatou Zouli (The Day I Lost my Shadow, Soudade Kaadan, SY/LB/FR/ QA 2018). Alone with her child, Sana tries to give him the impression of a normal everyday life within a chaotic city where nothing seems possible anymore. The search for a gas cylinder is transformed into a never-ending journey between the different parts of the conflict. In this nightmare, people cannot escape an- nihilation. The film emphasises these destructive aspects by showing how the characters slowly loose their shadows, a poetic but incisive image for blurring the boundary between existence and annihilation, between reality and afterlife (fig. 4). Kraben Rahu (Manta Ray, Puttiphong Aroonpheng, TH 2018) is a hermetic Thai narrative at the edge between everyday survival and otherworldly lights shining in the impenetrable forest where the bodies of victims of genocide are Festival Review: Film Festival Venice | 149www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1