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May 25, 2006 (from Variety)
Munich rights watch
World Brief
By ED MEZA
The Munich Filmfest, running July 15-22, is joining forces with Human Rights
Watch for the first time this year, presenting three pics addressing human
rights issues.
Robert Edwards' political satire "Land of the Blind" stars Ralph FiennesRalph
Fiennes as an idealistic soldier recruited by a former political prisoner
(Donald SutherlandDonald Sutherland) to overthrow the country's dictator.
DocuDocu "KZ," by Rex Bloomstein, examines the Austrian town of Mauthausen, site
of a WWII concentration camp, while "Punam," by Lucian Muntean and Natasa
Stankovic, chronicles the life of a motherless Nepalese girl who has the rare
opportunity to go to school while also taking care of her siblings.
Separately, fest will honor the work of Brit helmer Mike FiggisMike Figgis with
a retrospective.
February 16, 2005 (from Bauer Martinez Studios website)
Land of the Blind synopsis
Warning: contains many plot spoilers and details!
A man wearing a tattered prison uniform sits at a typewriter in a bare white
room and recounts his life story.
The setting is an unnamed totalitarian state. The narrator - Joe (Ralph Fiennes) - is
a guard at a notorious prison housing a famous political prisoner, a playwright
named Thorne (Donald Sutherland). The two strike up a friendship, with the
playwright attempting to propagandize the young soldier. Thorne is the leader of
an opposition group waging a campaign of terrorism and guerrilla warfare against
the government - a brutal dictatorship run by a sadistic dilettante nicknamed
Junior and his Lady Macbeth-like wife. While Joe - young and accepting of the
status quo - disagrees with Thorne's politics, he is deeply impressed by his
dedication and begins to question the legitimacy of the government. Meanwhile,
Junior - feeling the pressure of the terrorist campaign - attempts to make Thorne
bend to his will in order to stop the civil war, which Thorne's men seem to be
winning. Thorne is tortured, and paraded before the camera to confess his crimes
against the state, but during the broadcast he blinks out a message in Morse
code for the national TV audience. Joe's superiors then force him to administer
a vicious beating to Thorne.
Following the debacle of Thorne's TV broadcast, Junior finds himself under
intense pressure to put an end to the guerrilla war. Once considered an enemy of
the state, Thorne is now a national hero in the eyes of many. Junior orders
Thorne released, hoping to deprive him of his status as a martyr and reduce him
to nothing more than an ordinary politician. The newly freed Thorne meets up
again with Joe, now a captain in the presidential security detail. He attempts
to recruit Joe to the opposition cause, and after much prodding, succeeds. Joe
betrays Junior to Thorne and his followers, who enter the palace in the middle
of the night, stage a mock trial, and execute the president and first lady.
We jump ahead - three years have gone by. The new revolutionary government led
by Thorne has instituted a radical fundamentalist regime where all the country's
doctors are sent to re-education camps, children betray their parents to the
secret police, and red not green means go at traffic lights. Like many of his
countrymen, Joe has become disillusioned with the new regime. Thorne summons him
for a tete a tete at the presidential palace - where Thorne now resides - but Joe
remains unmoved by Thorne's argument that the revolution is still worthwhile. He
insists Joe sign a loyalty oath. Joe refuses and is thrown into a re-education
camp where he is tortured and brainwashed. His interrogators attempt to extract
from Joe information about a conspiracy that doesn't exist, while simultaneously
trying to convince him that he never participated in the coup against Junior
that they are now attempting to erase from history. Meanwhile, Thorne is
becoming increasingly unhinged. He comes to visit the prison and doesn't even
recognize Joe.
The revolutionary government eventually falls, Thorne and its other leaders are
murdered, and the prisoners at the re-education camp are set free as the old
regime is restored. But because Joe is on record as insisting that he was part
of the coup against the late president, he remains imprisoned. As the film ends,
twenty years later, he is the only inmate left in the prison, typing away as he
recounts his life story. Unsure of whether it is all in his head or if it really
happened.
November 4, 2004 (from Reuters/Hollywood Reporter)
Sutherland, Fiennes Turn a 'Blind' Eye
By Liza Foreman
Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland have signed on to star in the political
drama "Land of the Blind."
"Blind," to be written and directed by Robert Edwards, is the story of a
prisoner who recounts his life as a soldier turned political dissident and his
eventual role in the overthrow of his unnamed country's totalitarian government.
Fiennes will play the narrator, Joe, a guard at a notorious prison housing the
famous political prisoner, a playwright named Thorne (Sutherland). Thorne leads
a group involved in waging a game of warfare and terrorism against the
government, a brutal and sadistic dictatorship.
The project is a Defender Film Fund production in association with Lucky 7 Prods.
and the Jon Avnet Co. Production is set to begin in early January in London.
Fiennes' other projects include "The Constant Gardner," "Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire" and "Chromophobia." Sutherland has been at work on Robert Towne's
long-gestating book adaptation "Ask the Dust," "American Gun" and "Pride and
Prejudice."
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