Watching Restrepo earlier this summer I was reminded of La Sierra, a similarly styled you-are-there war documentary about the deadly urban battles between Colombian paramilitary units and rebel guerrilla factions, which killed more than 30,000 people during the late 90's/early 00's. Within this setting La Sierra plays like a non-fiction version of City of God, which was inspired by true events but never given the documentary treatment (unless you consider parts of Jeff Zimbalist's hopeful Favela Rising; coincidentally Zimbalist also knows a thing or two about Colombia having recently directed the excellent The Two Escobars).
Anyway, I saw La Sierra years ago at a small film festival in San Diego, and it was unforgettable enough for me to name it among the best documentaries of the decade. Revisiting again last week thanks to Netflix (add it now), I was struck by the rich layers it efficiently provides in 84 minutes, as well as its ability to haunt me with dozens of unanswered - and perhaps unanswerable - questions.
Like Restrepo, La Sierra was made by journalists (Scott Dalton and Margarita Martinez) who embedded themselves and risked their lives in an extremely dangerous, highly complex political situation. Both films juxtapose disturbing raw combat footage with serene scenes of nature and poignant interviews with jaded fighters. One of the main differences, however, and one that lends a profound sadness to the film's eventual outcomes, is that the interviews in La Sierra all take place in real time, within the period documented by the film. The characters talk a lot about living one day at a time, not being able to plan or even imagine their lives past the next week. Death is ever present, and when it arrives suddenly and violently for one of the film's main subjects you experience a sickening realization that this story was not planned out. There was no script. The camera was simply turned on and life was lived, at least for a while.
