“Going through such a hard experience has changed me. I have matured as a journalist”. The war correspondent MarcMarginedas (Barcelona, 1967) was kidnapped for 178 days in Syria, in 2013, by the Islamic State. He has returned to the scenes of those experiences to film the documentary Return to Raqqa, directed by Albert Solé and Raúl Cuevas and which is being shown at nine o’clock tonight at the Truffaut cinema in Girona, with the presence of the same journalist and the two co-directors, who will then dialogue with the attendees.
Marc Marginedas was captured on September 4, 2013 by the self-proclaimed Islamic State in northwestern Syria. “From the moment he was released, we started to conceive the idea of doing this work”, says Albert Solé. “As a documentary filmmaker, what I like most is getting to know other realities and accompanying Marc, and traveling with him to Syria has been a pleasure,” points out Raúl Cuevas.
Marginedas was in captivity with 19 other people for six months, after continuous torture. “In a situation like this in which you live with these people, the best and worst of the human condition comes out. Fate has united us forever and we are a small family”, says the journalist, who also adds that the documentary has been a way to better understand the complexity of the Syrian war: “this experience has pushed me to understand why an insurgency that demanded democracy was transformed into this monstrosity.”
A solo trip
There are trips that can only be done solo. The return of Marc Marginedas to Raqqa is one of them. It doesn’t matter that the reporter and war correspondent returned to this city in northern Syria surrounded by people and cameras, because in reality no one could accompany Marginedas on this trip. Being with him, yes. Film their gestures and looks, too. Collect impressions, no doubt. But to live what he lived and feel what he felt, that is not possible. Marc Marginedas was alone when he returned to the banks of the Euphrates, the biblical river that provided the water that made the world’s first civilization flourish, to relive the 178 days he spent there as a captive of the Islamic State.
We said that no one could truly accompany Marginedas on his return to Raqqa, and that is not entirely true. There are about twenty people who could have recognized themselves in the experience that the Barcelona reporter had in the reunion with the Syrian landscape. They are the journalists and aid workers who shared captivity with him in the cells of the Islamic State between 2013 and 2014. Some, such as El Mundo journalist Javier Espinosa and Danish photographer Daniel Rye, participate in the documentary. Others (we remember their names: James Foley, Alan Henning, Peter Kassig, David Haines, Kayla Mueller, Steven Sotloff…) were not lucky enough to get out of that hell alive.
Albert Sáez, director of El Periódico – the newspaper for which Marginedas works and which belongs to Prensa Ibérica, the same publishing group as Diari de Girona – assures that the existence of the Solé i Cuevas documentary is “a great reason for pride”. Among other reasons because, “Marc represents us much better than we are”. It is difficult to disagree with this assessment when one sees on the screen, for example, how Marginedas takes advantage of a visit to a refugee camp to disassociate himself from the status of the film’s protagonist and instead take an interest in the living conditions of the people who live there, because of the opinions, feelings and expectations.
“Closing a vital chapter”.
It is moments like this, more than his own words in the interviews and presentations he has to make these days, that reveal what Return to Raqqa has meant for Marginedas. He talks about “putting the past behind us” and “closing a chapter” in his life. But it is hard not to see in this journey back to the place where he was held captive and suffered torture and humiliation a decade ago – the heart of terror – a desperate search for answers. There is nothing more frustrating for a reporter than not being able to explain something to your readers because you are unable to understand it yourself. Marginedas, journalist to the bone, tries to find meaning in his kidnapping and plucks here and there nuggets of meaning and connects the past with the present. And it is this tension that gives life to a necessary film which, as Albert Solé defends, “tells one story and many at the same time”.
In 2013, Marginedas traveled to Syria because he wanted to tell the world about the suffering of a civilian population condemned to coexist with a merciless war. After ten years, his priorities have not changed. “Our captivity is nothing compared to the suffering of these people,” he says at one point in Return to Raqqa.