This film seems an effort to engage the life and destiny of a city at the level of the political and social, using journalistic techniques but always with an awareness that these are also interpretations - something that most USian journalism tends to overlook. What will mostly bother people is that it lacks the usual human center - the man/woman/family to which the bad things happen which will cause us to care that they are happening. This is hardly an oversight; it is a choice, and one that deserves to be considered openly without the rush to judgment that otherwise occurs when confronted with the unfamiliar. The human center of the film is there, but always at the edges, implied. We barely glimpse the victims of the collapsed building, but their fate informs every frame. And the superb "portrayals" by actual members of the city council (the De Vita character, e.g.) give us not actors, but people enmeshed in the actuality. This film deserves wider awareness.
Review of Hands Over the City
