It's always good to watch something about Angola and about the devastating civil war. We need more and more. This is however, a bit underwhelming.

First, it's incredibly one-sided. For a work based on a journalist piece you would expect something that would recognize that there isn't "good or bad" in wars. We the purists vs the evil is something that simple doesn't happen and didn't happen in Angola at all. The MPLA killed, at least, as many as the other movements but that's not the impression you take from this. It would be good to show a bit about the other sides and their motivations (no, it was not only the American capitalism

"Another Day of Life" is a co-production between no less than 5 European countries from 2018. As a consequence you will also hear all kinds of languages, but English is dominant in dialogs. This movie was directed by Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow and for both it was their first full feature film effort after a nice amount of short film releases. The duo was also in charge of writing here and actually not just these two. Another writer here would be Ryszard Kapuscinski and he wrote the book that the film is based on and we also see him from beginning to end here as this is his story, his journey as a journalist through Angola in days of the Cold War when nothing was really safe there, such as to how much of an extent the country would really be pulled into the Cold War, to what extent the Soviet Union would be involved and not just Cuba and how far South Africa would go in their attempts to push through the goals of the United States of America. Fittingly, there is a brief Kissinger interview seen at the end. Anyway, back to Kapuscinski. He arrives in Angola and keeps travelling further and further south where he meets some interesting people that played a role in war-ridden Angola. Some of them were still alive when the film was made, so you see them back then and in the now as they make brief statements about the situation back then and what connected them with Kapuscinski who died over a decade ago.

This is an animated movie, not the kind that is for kids and adults alike, but really one only for grown-ups. Very young audiences should not have to watch the violence and they would not really be interested in the story I think. Similar to Waltz with Bashir, an Oscar nominated film from about a decade ago that you probably came across already if you consider watching this one. Sadly, that Israeli movie was far more memorable to me compared to this one. One problem I got here is that the back and forth between animation and live action did not always feel right or even necessary. The scenes when we see a car drive down a road are one thing and at least visually the switch somewhat made sense there is not for any other reason. But when we have very early on, a group of Angolans dancing out of nowhere just for fun, it felt truly pointless. Besides, in terms of the animation only, it took me a while to get used to the looks and especially in the characters and their (sometimes delayed) movements I wasn't sold. The voice acting was okay. The non-people aspects convinced me too visually. There is one pretty beautiful shot at the very end when we have the main character look out of a window. All in all, there were scenes and sequences I enjoyed, especially everything that involved Carlota and her surprising death. There the switch between animation and live action, especially photographs, was done very well. But afterward the film becomes mediocre again sadly. Even for 85 minutes, the scenes I enjoyed in terms of quantity weren't enough for a positive recommendation. Another thing I struggled with was the sound. I don't think it was a problem of the copy of the film or the theater I watched it in, but the film itself. They did not really do themselves a great favor with the music and that as well as the sound effects felt way too loud compared to the spoken parts. It did get annoying quickly and stayed that way mostly until the end. Nonetheless I can see why the film won so many awards and scored even more nimnations, also some prestigious ones, as you don't see animated films about political history too frequently and Angola is also a subject that has not been dealt with a lot in the past. So it was something new and something unique. Shame the execution in detail could not really win me over here. And I am saying this as somebody who is a sucker for animated films. But this one I give a thumbs-down. Not recommended and overall i cannot deny I was glad it was such a rather brief movie.

Very good movie on the Angola civil war, a subject not often explored in film but full of possibilities as most wars are. But this is a different kind of movie as it uses animation to tell its story while also taking the Band of Brothers way of storytelling, by having the real people who were involved in it say in their own words what happened. It is mostly animation but with live action images scattered throughout, resulting in a very engaging experience. Technically I found the movie breathtakingly beautiful, using a style of animation that I don't particularly like but making the most out of it, creating some beautiful imagery and a realism that I wasn't expecting. Congratulations to the duo directing the movie, really well done. And now I must delve a bit on the political side of this movie. As a Portuguese this is a story that resonates a lot with us because it was a huge deal in our country, full of changes during that period of time. I must address another reviewer here that didn't like the way it made the MPLA look like saints, and he didn't like the movie because of it, he made a lot of valid points but I don't think this movie is as black and white as he makes it seem, sure it is told through the eyes of MPLA supporters, but there are a lot of clues to show that they were no saints, for example, when they are talking about the brother or comrade way of addressing a soldier, they say it's a coin flip and they both will kill you if you address them in the wrong manner, and by the end, the Artur character is extremely disappointed with the way the war turned out, where all their ideals and principals were never upheld, calling into question the whole war, which again shows that the MPLA were not very different from UNITA. And this brings me to our main character, Ryszard Kapuscinski. He was a very well known Polish journalist and writer and upon some research I found that he was not very consensual, as he often took real stories and romanticized them so much to the point of being total inventions. By adapting one of his works the filmmakers made an excellent decision of using the before mentioned technique of mixing animation, to tell the Kapuscinski story, and real live footage, to act as kind of a fact checker about what is being said. Highly recommended.