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Meg Johnstone
-
TheTyee.ca
Vancouver, BC, Canada
April 28, 2006
"A Cry For Madiom achieves something
rarely seen in filmmaking: visual lament. In the ancient tradition of sorrow
and loss, Madiom is a song of lament --- strikingly offset by the joyful
singing of the children and women in the feeding centre. By no means a
dirge, it is a song of the beauty and dignity of humanity, and of that loss
--- the only fitting response to an inhumane crisis where upwards of 40
children are dying a day and where death is so commonplace it goes nearly
unacknowledged.."
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Erin Stevens - The Point
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada
February 2, 2005
"...it powerfully revels the realities of
human suffering, especially that
experienced by children. Inevitably,
nearly the entire discussion group,
including Erez himself, was in tears
by the end."
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Vivienne Nilan - Kathimerini
exclusively available inside the
International Herald Tribune
in Greece and Cyprus
Athens, Greece
June 29, 2005
"In A Cry for Madiom, named for a little boy whose
brilliant smile is one of the film’s rare bright moments, the camera simply
observes the plight of the starving.
A Canadian
nurse working with an NGO has the appalling task of deciding whether
applicants are sufficiently malnourished to qualify for the supplemental
feeding program that may save their lives.
Flies crawl
over emaciated bodies; skeletal infants suck at empty breasts; the weakest
succumb and are buried. That is all there is and it is almost unbearable..."
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Dave Amber, newtimesbpb.com
Keeping It Reel
Fort Lauderdale
International Film Festival
documentaries capture the bizarre and the banal
Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, USA
October 20, 2005
"Madiom
Madiok is a 5-year-old boy in southern Sudan, a
walking skeleton weighing in at only 15 pounds. His
dutiful mother has brought him to a Doctors Without
Borders feeding center, where lots of other naked,
starving people swat flies and wait for food. In this
sad film, you see that only the most severely
malnourished are allowed into the center. The
13-year-old encountered one day will be dead the next.
A Cry for Madiom is composed of raw, unedited footage
from the late '90s shot over several days by an
Israeli television journalist who notes that not much
has changed in 50 years of drought and political
strife. Although the level of suffering is not for the
faint of heart, this cry for a boy leaves you
wondering about the fate of Madiom (is he still alive
five years later?) and what the hell is going on over
there now."
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Yoav Bornstein - Galei Zahal
Israel Radio
Tel Aviv, Israel
July 11, 2005
(MP3)
(Hebrew audio only)
This radio
report, in Hebrew,
summarizes the A Cry for Madiom
experience during the special screening
at the Israel Open University main
campus near Tel Aviv, July 5, 2005.
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Arie Dayan - Haaretz
Israel Daily
Tel Aviv, Israel
July 18, 2005
(Hebrew only)
This article,
in Hebrew, summarizes
the unique awareness conference
held around the special screening of
A Cry for Madiom at the Israel Open
University main campus near Tel Aviv,
July 5, 2005.
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2006 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Catalogue
Thessaloniki, Greece
March, 2006
"A
Cry for Madiom is a rare experience exposing the
shocking harsh conditions of millions of ill-fated
internally displaced Sudanese. the film drops
you into a remote feeding center, near the Darfur
border, and leaves you there for 24 hours. To
achieve this total sensorial experience, the film is
created from mostly untouched, unedited material."
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Lot Piscaer - IDFA-Daily
Amsterdam, The Netherland
November 29, 2005
"We’ve all seen images like this before, but you
really cannot let Erez Barzilay’s documentairy pass by
like any other. Especialy once you realize that the
images have been made as far back as 1998, and that
the situation hasn’t improved much since."
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2005 IDFA Catalogue
Amsterdam, The Netherland
November, 2005
"For a report for CNN in 1998, director Barzilay shot
images of a food aid camp of Doctors Without Borders
in South Sudan. Drought and looting had brought about
large-scale famine in the region. At the time, his
story was cut down to a five-and-a-half-minute item.
Meanwhile, the situation in this area has not
improved; the misery has only expanded to the region
of Darfur to the north. Barzilay decided to
incorporate the images he shot back then in a
documentary about the harrowing and unrelenting fate
of the people of South Sudan. The crude footage he
shot in the camp is shown almost in its original form,
which only adds to the impact of the images. Barzilay
films the emaciated mothers and young children who
after days of hiking arrive at the camp and have to
wait for their registration and - hopefully - some
food. Now and then, he asks the waiting people and the
doctors questions from behind his camera. Due to the
inadequate infrastructure, relief workers cannot
supply everyone with food and have to make a
selection. Only the gravest cases qualify for daily
food aid. The rest, no matter how scrawny they look to
us, have to make do with a weekly allotment."
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Cindy Chang - MemphisMojo.com
April
25, 2005
Memphis, Tennessee, USA
"The festival included full-length features along with
short narratives and animated films ranging from
emotionally charged documentaries like Erez Barzilay’s
A Cry for Madiom, which examines the harsh reality of
South Sudan, to comedic film noirs like UK native
Simon Cooper’s Topsoil, which follows leading
character Mike as he recounts events leading up to his
being buried alive...
"A Cry for Madiom’s Erez
Barzilay hopes that people who have viewed his film
will not just enjoy the show, but "act, not just talk
about it. There is so much to do - just get updated on
the situation, the unbelievable suffering, the
senseless killings that still rages in the region [of
Sudan]."
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2005 AFO
Program
Olomouc, Czech Republic
October, 2005
"A testimony about the life and enormous suffering of
children living in the country where the longest
lasting African war is taking place
- South Sudan."
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