What if everything you set yourself up to be was wrong? Frances has always been a study machine with one goal, elite university. Frances and Aled’s friendship is a truly beautiful thing, and this is a seriously smart piece of contemporary YA. “Nothing good comes out of lying to people,” Frances remarks, and that’s one of the big themes of this big-hearted novel: being brave enough to face up to the truth, not least the realisation that sometimes the path you’ve mapped out for yourself isn't the right one. Then, while devastated at losing her best friend, the rest of Frances’ life also starts to unravel. Thinking Frances has betrayed him, Aled cuts all contact with her when he leaves for university.
Their friendship flourishes until Aled is outed as the podcast’s creator.
He loves her art, loves her style and, most importantly, he makes Frances “feel like I’d never had a real friend before”. Shy, clever Aled turns out to be the creator of Universe City. She also has a secret side that loves wearing burger-print jumpers and creating fan-art for cult YouTube podcast, Universe City, although that remains firmly under wraps until she befriends Aled. But academic success isn’t all there is to Frances. That’s the path she believes will lead to a happy life. She’s set on reading English Literature at Cambridge and getting a good job. Radio Silence was produced by Swiss company Akka Films with Mexican company Cactus Docs, in collaboration with RTS Radio Télévision Suisse and SRG SSR.One of our Books of the Year 2016 | March 2016 Book of the Monthįrances’ life has been mapped out since forever. Like a kaleidoscope pointed on a complex world in constant mutation and with a visceral need for voices and images that are true and brave. Radio Silence enriches a discourse on Mexico which the filmmaker seeks to complexify with each film. “We are all Carmen”, chants the crowd protesting her firing, as if to remind us that we all carry without ourselves the courage to rebel against a soporific official line. The off-camera voice of the director (whose words, pitiless but terribly real, are chosen with great care) gives the film a bittersweet flavour, as poetic as it is strong. She makes us imagine the worst, but without depriving her heroine of the kindness and sense of humour that make her so special. Instead of really showing the horror (we only ever see glimpses of it), Juliana Fanjul suggests, which is an undoubtedly more powerful approach. From then on, the film follows the eventful everyday life of Carmen, who sets up and leads her own investigation unit, the sole ray of light in a monothematic and intoxicated media landscape. A silence which the journalist, whose words seem amplified (or rather, penetrated) by the presence of the director’s camera, isn’t planning to let last very long. Though those in power have no qualms about unleashing tons of ready-made slogans and thunderous military parades, a deafening silence (as described by the director in voice-over) takes over following the firing of Carmen. The event is a source of anger which hovers over the entire film like a thin but persistent mist, amplified by the background music which accompanies images of a Mexico suffocated by a peace described as “mafia-like”. “The portrait of Mexico is the face of the assassinated journalists” is clearly stated at the beginning of the film, which opens on the murder of Javier Valdez Cárdenas, founder of the newspaper Ríodoce and important voice in the opposition. This choice will spark collective indignation and trigger a media war in favour of freedom of speech and of the press. Disinformation is the journalist’s true fight, a festering wound which the government attempts to heal by getting Aristegui fired from her job as a radio journalist after she and her team reveal a corruption scandal that involves the president himself. Seemingly immune to fear, Carmen dedicates all her time to unveiling the truth hidden by a supposedly respectable but in reality utterly corrupt Mexican government, led by the same political party for 70 years. So utterly incorruptible that she seems to possess a mystical aura, Carmen Aristegui represents, for the millions of people who support her, the only alternative voice to the official line.
0 kommentar(er)
