2022, 86´/58´ Min E/D
Idea: Josep Morell, Jordi Vilar
Authors: Josep Morell, Carlo Monte Salvador, Rosalind Bain
Director: Rosalind Bain
Director 2nd Unit (Austria, Bosnia & Hercegovina): Hansjürgen Schmölzer
Camera: Joan Fabricant Tisminetzky, Gerfried Guggi, Anna Abbasi
Editing: Juan Gabriel García
Music: Hannes Gill
Producers: Jordi Vilar, Josep Morell, Hansjürgen Schmölzer, Esther van Messel
Filmhomepage: https://thenegotiators.film/
A coproduction of OTTOKAR, First Hand Films and BSX Schmölzer GmbH.
Behind the scenes of global peace agreements are years of hard work: it’s not just about gaining trust from both sides, you also have to keep that trust over long periods of time. Says Jordi, one of the four negotiators who show us some of the world’s most entrenched conflicts.
We see the conflicts through their eyes and discover their challenges and personal sacrifices as they attempt to resolve conflicts in the most difficult circumstances.
In Mexico, Jordi Raich is a “humanitarian diplomat” with more than thirty years of experience as an international aid worker and director of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Raich was one of the architects of Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement.
In South Sudan, Dorsa Nazewi showed what it is like to negotiate with local chiefs on the ground. This is an unstructured country that has been immersed in a civil war for years. It is the youngest country in the world.
Dorsa knows all too well what it is like to grow up in a country that is not her own. Born in Iran, her family had to emigrate to Australia. She has been head of ICRC operations in South Sudan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria.
The Norwegian diplomat Dag Nylander allows us to share the historical tradition of his country that has been involved in searching peaceful solutions to conflicts anywhere in the world. Nylander served as head of the Norwegian mission in Bogota from 2006 to 2008 and later he was Norway’s special envoy and guarantor of the Colombian peace process.
Valentin Inzko is a diplomat and a member of the Slovene minority in Austria, and has been the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina until 2021. He is responsible for implementing the Dayton peace accords signed 25 years ago that ended the war in the Balkans.
Inzko shows how diplomacy can use power as a negotiation element, to balance the asymmetry of forces in the region.
THE NEGOTIATORS is an investigative film looking at those who seek solutions to armed crises in the 21st century, wanting their work to to make the world a better place.