After the Apocalypse (2010) & The Redemption of General Butt Naked (2010)

basics...
The Radio Times has picked out a couple of the True Stories documentary film strands on More 4 lately, so I've taken to recording/watching them and found some very interesting stories. The first one I watched was After the Apocalypse which took as its focus the possibly sinister aftermath of Soviet nuclear testing in the Polygon/Semipalatinsk Test Site in remote Kazakhstan. The second followed Joshua Blahyi, known as General Butt Naked during the Liberian civil war of the 1990s, who has become born-again and seeks forgiveness for his horrific acts of bloody violence. 

brilliant...
Neither story is the sort of thing that makes for easy viewing, but both subjects are fascinating, and the way both documentary makers let the people tell the story with no narration allows you to make up your own mind about who to believe or who to forgive. Apocalypse begins with stories of people who have grown up in the Polygon area and they and their children have suffered physical deformities, which they blame on nuclear fallout. However, as the film goes on we meet scientists who cast doubt on the veracity of these claims. But some of these scientists work for the government. So it is difficult to know who to believe, since the officials may have an agenda just as much as the poor families are looking for excuses. What is true is that the treatment of the deformed children, and the expectant mothers, is terrible at the hands of unfeeling health professionals. 

Victims of the Polygon?

In Redemption - which has a title that really draws you in with the expectation of something a little bit salacious - is the more fascinating of the two documentaries. Covering a filming period of months and years, it follows Blahyi as he addresses congregations, meets victims of his brutality, testifies to the Liberian war crimes 'pre-tribunal' and then goes into hiding. The film never asks you to judge Blahyi, but it allows him to explain himself, his past actions and his later search for redemption, and contrasts this with talking heads interviews with historians, ex-gang members and victims' rights campaigners. After admitting to killing not less than 20,000 through his actions in the civil war at the tribunal, Blahyi is exonerated from prosecution while others - including a politician who had killed the ex-Liberian leader - were recommended for trial. It's a shocking admission, a shocking statistic, and an even more shocking outcome. It makes you wonder about the power of forgiveness and whether a person really is capable of such acts of contrition as Blahyi. 

briefly...
Sometimes difficult to watch, yet always fascinating, thought-provoking studies of two terrible periods in the histories of little-discussed countries. I will be watching more True Stories with interest.