An observation already made about Facing War, directed by Tommy Gulliksen, sold by CAT&Docs and opening CPH:DOX March 19, is that, even in advance of its world premiere, this seems like a film from another era.
The film portrays Jens Stoltenberg’s final months last year as Secretary General of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). The veteran Norwegian politician and diplomat is shown shuttling between countries, trying to keep the alliance intact as tensions mount over the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. When the film was made, Joe Biden was still the President. Now, of course, Donald Trump has returned to the White House.
With the bull back in the china shop, the norms of international statecraft have been shattered and the long-term future of NATO is being questioned.
“We were sitting with our team and someone asked have you thought that you might have portrayed the last person to be able to keep the alliance together. That’s a terrifying thought,” Gulliksen says of the upheaval during recent months “What we have [at NATO] was built over generations, but it can be torn down in a very short period. Leadership matters. Who we elect matters. Democracy matters.”
The director worries that a new generation regards politics as a popularity concert “where being a politician is a performance. That is just a very small part of being a leader, but unfortunately that sways a lot of voters.”
Gulliksen’s motivation in making the documentary was to take “the audience behind the curtain” and to show them how politics and diplomacy really work, in the raw.
The director has an obvious rapport with his subject. In the film, he and Stoltenberg spend a lot of time in cars, on flights or in train carriages. They always talk together in Norwegian, the language they share. “There is some sort of intimacy in that. We can understand each other when nobody else can…in a way, it’s our secret language and he can say whatever he wants.”
Gulliksen credits his producer Anne Marte Blindheim, a former political commentator, with facilitating the relationship. They previously worked together on the series When We Ruled the Country, which profiled living former Norwegian prime ministers, Stoltenberg among them.
“That was important, getting to know him [Stoltenberg] and getting his trust.”
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Blindheim had pushed for a documentary to be made about NATO. It wasn’t easy to persuade the politicians to let them make the film.
“Gaining his [Stoltenberg’s] trust is one thing, but also gaining NATO’s trust is something different,” the director remembers. “But it was worked out. We suddenly got a green light on a Thursday and they [the NATO officials] said ‘tomorrow we are going to South Korea and Japan – and we need you to come.’”
Thus began an exhausting period for the director. “I think we filmed across 27 countries and many of them we went to several times. His team, they work in shifts. It is only him that goes to all the trips. But for long periods I was the other one, constantly on the move. The most extreme day, we were in five countries in one day.”
As part of Stoltenberg’s entourage, Gulliksen didn’t have to wait for hours at passport control. “But still it does something to you…the soul doesn’t travel as fast as your body. It takes a while for your soul to arrive at its destination.”
One of the upsides of all the travel was the insight it gave him into his subject: the strains Stoltenberg was facing, living out of a suitcase, changing hotels every night, crossing different time zones.
“In a way, it was like a world tour for a rock band or whatever.”
But there was little privacy or down time. Almost every meal that Stoltenberg ate would also double as a political meeting.
Early on in the film, Stoltenberg talks movingly about his beloved wife and how his all-consuming work at NATO keeps him away from her. However, after he stood down from the organisation, he promptly landed an almost equally challenging job, as Minister of Finance in the Norwegian cabinet.
“To be fair, he was never going to be into gardening,” the director says of his subject’s immediate return to front-line Norwegian politics.
Now, at least, Stoltenberg can live in the family home in Oslo.
“He wants to keep busy. It’s very hard to slow down and if you go from 100mph to zero, I think that is very dangerous actually. That was never going to happen. For him to have a settled work life in Oslo, that’s a real improvement.”
Throughout the making of the documentary, Gulliksen tried not to become too close to his subject or his advisers. The film wasn’t intended as an “endorsement” of either Stoltenberg or of NATO.
“I’d be travelling, of course, with his team, but they are not my colleagues; they are not my friends. I never shared a meal with them. I never shared a drink with them other than for strictly professional purposes,” the director notes. “I was very disciplined in not engaging with them socially. I don’t work for NATO. They all do. Of course, when you are portraying power – and NATO is the most powerful military alliance in the world – you need to be aware of that.”
Having spent so much time with Stoltenberg, he had seen how easily the politician would brush off even the most critical questions from journalists. Far more revealing were the moments when he was being observed by Gulliksen’s camera going about his business.
“I’ve been astonished that they didn’t seem to care that I was there. In a way, I felt staying true to a cinema verité style was the way forward,” the director says.
The film is full of humorous observations of politicians in informal settings, at their most human and down to earth. We’ll see them kick off their shoes to rest their feet. World leaders will be shown exchanging small talk. Sometimes they’ll yawn or become distracted. While they’re debating weighty matters, there might be cleaners vacuuming the red carpet nearby.
“You’re always looking to say something about the person that can’t be said in words,” Gulliksen says. “Even though there are high stakes negotiations, people are people.”
The director was keen to show “that there is responsible leadership out there sometimes as well.” Stoltenberg emerges in the documentary as an impressive and largely sympathetic figure who possesses consummate diplomatic skills. He’s capable of striking up a rapport with anyone, whether it’s Trump or Orban – and we learn there was even a period when he had a reasonably cordial relationship with the Russian dictator Putin too. He always prepares “fun facts” to break the ice with the frostiest and most aloof figures he meets.
“He’s really, really good at making them feel at ease.”
Most of the figures we see here are middle aged white men in suits. And, no, the director wasn’t surprised by the lack of diversity within NATO and European politics in general.
“There’s no hiding that. Especially with Merkel stepping down…that’s not something I can do anything about. There are lots of suits and ties.” When Stoltenberg saw an early cut of the film, he himself said: “that’s a lot of men!”
Now, plans are afoot for a screening of the documentary in Brussels in April. This will allow the politicians to “see the results” of the work done by the “very annoying guy who has been tormenting them with a camera inside a place where there is not supposed be a camera.”
One major politician he filmed very close up and personal was President Biden. During the speech when Biden made his notorious gaffe, introducing Ukrainian leader Zelensky as Putin, Gulliksen was very nearby.
“I was literally one metre away. I am at the foot of the lectern and I have the whole audience behind me…the secret service don’t like me to be there, but I am a pain in the ass and they allow me to be there. You get a really close shot. But I have to admit I nearly dropped my camera…to this day, every time I watch it I cringe. I feel so bad for both of them. It was like the end of an era. But they [Zelensky and Biden] handled it really well, both of them. And that’s is kind of how democracy works. It can take a turn for the worse – but you have to trust the process and that responsible leadership will take us through the storm…”
