A LA GUERRE COMME A LA GUERRE

2010

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War Is Not A Game (2010) explains the Geneva Conventions in simple terms to a broad international audience. ARTE and a number of other European and Canadian public broadcasters commissioned the film. It was selected for IDFA 2011 in Amsterdam. It received the DOXA Film Festival Award for Most Creative Documentary in Vancouver and the YFF Best Historical Documentary Award in Yorkton. The film was nominated for the Prix Europa in Berlin and also won an award in France : l’Etoile de la Scam – the French author’s rights organization.

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The DOXA Film Festival described the film as follows: “Lode Desmet’s film is a scrupulous examination of the morality of combat. The interview subjects include former soldiers, mercenaries, guerrillas and peacekeepers; female bomber pilots serving in Afghanistan; and a Jewish-American lawyer who prosecuted Nazis at the Nuremberg tribunals. The interviews are deeply moving and provocative, as we hear tales of combat that complicate the notion of strict ethical codes. The film's subject is the intersection of abstract law and personal context, and Desmet pursues this dynamic across a broad swath of history, from World War II to Bosnia to the War on Terror. This is a disturbing, illuminating film that applies big questions to personal contexts, and vice versa.”