Wrong Time Wrong Place

The role that each minute plays in our lives can reliably be ascertained through various tragedies in which innocent people die for the mere reason that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Was chance, fate, or mere unforeseeable coincidence responsible for their deaths? And, conversely, can people speak of luck or divine providence when they miss suffering a similar fate by a proverbial hair? In his latest film, experienced Dutch director John Appel asks similar questions in connection with the Anders Breivik murders that took place on Norway’s Utøya island. Without the slightest tendency towards sensationalism or intent to reconstruct the details of the media-blitzed massacre, the filmmaker sought out several individuals who survived; in conversations with the director, these young people themselves contemplate the reasons why they in particular were spared. This chillingly intimate film essay, investigating the thin line between life and death, screened at the gala opening of the world’s largest documentary film festival, IDFA, in Amsterdam. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)