Manchester International Festival: 1,395 Days Without Red

A film without dialogue, following a woman on a typical trip across her home city, has become one of the surprise successes of the Manchester International Festival. 1,395 Days Without Red is an existential drama, fraught with dramatic tension and beautifully scored, exploring the effects of the Siege of Sarajevo on the daily life of the city’s inhabitants.

The path walked by the un-named lead (played by Spanish actress Maribel Verdu in a superbly understated performance) became known as Sniper Alley. The boulevards and intersections of the city were targeted by gunmen who would target civilians, creating an air of terror which pervaded daily life. At each crossing, we see groups of citizens gathering at the edge of the pavement, mustering up the courage to pass to the other side. Individuals deal with the ordeal of crossing in their own ways, taking time to gather their thoughts and make their peace, before rushing or walking across. The tension is not diminished by repetition; every crossing is fraught with danger. The emergency of a life and death situation is ever-present. Gunshots are rarely heard during the film, but their early foregrounding means that the audience is ever aware of the threat.

1,395 Days Without Red presents a genuinely existential situation, where civilians must continually be aware of their own potential death. Dialogue is replaced by exhalation, and humming, as individuals attempt to master their fear. Open spaces, once used as communal meeting points for atomised city-dwellers, are now places of terror and tension, where each person must confront what is in their own minds, with no heed for the actions of those around them. The individual is alone under the watchful eye of fate, manifested by the snipers.

The ever present possibility of mortality forces the viewer to confront their own conception of death, and the need to live in the moment. The citizens of Sarajevo were forced to make their peace with themselves before embarking on the most banal of trips; this is an uncomfortable thought for most in the West, where such ideas are put to the back of the mind. The success of the film lies in its ability to employ simple techniques to create a genuinely challenging air of tension, confronting the viewer, whilst also creating a beautiful piece of cinema. Our relationship with the city and attitude toward death is turned upside down, and yet the film still manages to feel affirming, partially due to the cut-in sections of an orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique.

The film runs until September 4, and is essential Festival viewing, especially in conjunction with Steenbeckett, an instillation based on Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, also showing at the Whitworth Gallery.