Augure is an amazing movie that does not look like any other movie. Augure shows a life full of rituals, magical realism, love and violence in the collectivist society of Congo. And it succeeds to bring in the individual perspective and choices.
I read several reviews after seeing the movie Augure, directed by former rapper Baloji. Reviewers clearly struggle to comment on a movie that does not play by their – western – rules.
* ‘the beautiful-looking vignettes sometimes don’t quite merge into one coherent story with one clear message’ (Filmtotaal)
* ‘a ragged, open, unfinished character’ (Filmkrant)
* ‘Baloji’s full-length debut floats gently around in a wonderful bath of magical realism, but we were not really overwhelmed by emotions’. (De Morgen)
I disagree with the reviewers and found Augure really something else. An innovative movie with a strong message: a major contribution to the world of movies. The suspense was quite heavy for me from the first minutes. I really did wonder what would follow and if I could hold it to the end of the movie. Augure starts with scenes that other movies end with. Luckily, I stayed.
The scenery and images are spectacular. As the reviewers did remark, colours, costumes, music, landscape, fairy tale, art and tradition, all of that is part of the story. A Belgian Congolese returns to his homeland to see if he can connect with his family and introduce his Belgian wife. ‘He told me it would be different’, she said, ‘but I did not understand how different’. Her strong point is that she looses grip from the very beginning of her arrival in Congo and lives with it. Her openness gives her connections.
Scenery in Congo is not just beautiful. There are many cruel aspects, violence, murder, rape and different kinds of exclusion: a more than average terrible phenomenon in a collectivist society. What the reviewers see as ‘ragged’ and not ‘coherent’, are the different perspectives of protagonists. They have to relate to the positive and negative aspects of that vibrant society and they do make their choices. Following their steps is very interesting. Sometimes these steps have many observers (the list of figurants in this movie is long). They are silently watching and give way to the individual path. It accentuates the meaning of individual expression within collectivism. The reviewer above who was not ‘really overwhelmed with emotions’ must have missed the possibility to relate to the protagonists’s soul.
After an intrusive and alienating start of the movie, seeing through the daily jungle of events becomes more and more clear. The viewer is left with the question how he himself lives now, and how he himself would live in the magical and hard reality of Congo. Go watch Augure if you dare to and if you feel ready to let go.
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Bilqiss is about regrets and hope for the chance to be the one you should have been. Living in a burqa is more than just having some inconvenient clothing; it is the expression of a patriarchal society where women live within the boundaries men grant them. Individual men have the right to totally suffocate the women they live with. You might be bored when I write it like this but reading Bilqiss will not bore you.
the sign to remember that moment is still on the wall inside the church (see the photograph on the right). In 1974 the Island of Cyprus was divided in a Northern and Southern part. The Greek Cypriots inhabitants of the village that then was called Stylloi, went to the South while Turkish Cypriots who lived in Mouttagiaka / Mutluyaka, an old Osman village in the very South of the island, resettled in Stylloi in the North and renamed the village of Stylloi after the village they left.
As the church of Saint Helias is quite new, there is not a lot to tell about it. The amount of concrete used is too big to call it ‘lovely’ like many other Greek churches still are. Inside, it was stripped of almost all objects, as you can see in the photograph I took. 
serves as Şehitler Müzesi, the Martyr’s Museum for Murataga, Sandallar and Atlilar where massacres took place in 1974. I passed this museum by surprise, on my way from the 
There had always been some pressure on the Turkish Cypriot children but the heavy troubles of 1958 chased all Turkish Cypriot children away and forced the last Turkish Cypriot inhabitants of Pigi Peristerona to leave and move to the smaller village of Murataga (in Greek: Maratha). Murataga welcomed the ‘refugees’ and built houses for them. At that time also a school and a mosque were made. Who could imagine that on August 14, 1974, 29 children (their names are in the picture) of that school would be killed, bulldozered and buried in mass graves?
However, what affected me most, was the guide of the museum himself… At the time of the massacre, most Turkish Cypriot men were in camps where the Greek Cypriots kept them as prisoner; some young men like himself had already gone to places where the fights took place, in his case Famagusta (in Turkish: Gazimagusa). While t
hey were absent, the women, the children and the elderly were murdered. The men who survived and returned to Murataga, Sandallar and Atlilar, found out that they lost almost everybody. For the museum guide this meant: his mother, his five sisters and his brother – you can see them in the lower row on the picture to the right – and his aunt and her seven children. Only his father who was a prisoner at the time of the massacre, survived.
The first church is (most probably) named Agia Marina. 
It is beautiful but in bad shape. The doors are closed but entering through a large window is possible. Pigeons live there in large quantities so the dirt is obvious. Most of the church’s interior is destroyed; see for example the marble altar in pieces in front of the church choir. It is possible to go upstairs to the first floor; the stairs are intact but I didn’t risk to walk on the wooden balcony though. What surprised me however, was to find the words EOKA and ENOSIS on the outer walls of the church, along with other Greek writings I could not decipher at that moment. I was surprised because during my multiple visits to Greek churches in the North all over the Island I never found these on church walls: just once, on the wall of a churchyard at 
Next, easy to find when you just follow the main road through the village, 
was the enormous Agios Anastasios church, built in 1953. It is open and also the first floor can be visited. There is still a good impression of what this church was meant to be. The state of the concrete and several details does not look attractive at this moment but my opinion can be biased because I don’t like this kind of new churches.
The old monastery church that stands nearby is also open because a door is missing. There is nothing interesting left at the interior. 
I could not find any history about this church, whether and how it was used after the new church opened in 1953. A short look down the stairs lead to a small cellar under the church. Some buildings next to the church could have been sleeping places for monks or stockrooms. Nothing really left there either.
the only inhabitant left in mine workers houses, almost forgotten by the world, becomes a monument of resistance; and so on. What is absolutely unique about this road movie that could also be called a road documentary, is the normality shown in its full brilliance. It shows that normality can be infinitely more interesting and great than the special.
From a vivid wheelchair run through Musée du Louvre in Paris to sharing sadness and perspectives on life: it forms one breathtaking story for the spectators.
(the Turkish side), the Greek graveyards may have been destroyed deliberately as they are all in a devastating state. The situation for Turkish cemetaries in the South of Cyprus (the Greek side) is different, he says. This raises questions about why this is the case and M. Thorsten Kruse comes – roughly – to conclusions as I formulated in 
