La Volutaria asks is good a product of people or systems? Marisa is a retired doctor, and comes to volunteer at a refugee camp. Over dinner with the other volunteers, all of whom are in their 20s, they begin to lament the state of the Spanish public health care system. The younger volunteers confidently rattle off its systemic issues, but Marisa pushes back. It wasn’t a system that sold their health care off for profit, it was politicians. She resents the way their analysis seemingly obfuscates the personal moral responsibility of the individuals whose actions and choices created this situation. “I have all their names, ” she says. For her, it is not an abstract injustice of social forces bumping together indifferently like weather. It is a deeply personal betrayal of something she dedicated her life too, watched many good people give their blood, sweat and tears to, and which was dismantled and sold out from under them by people concerned only with their own greed.

It’s one short conversation but it sets the mission statement for the film. Because here is Marisa again, trying to do good. She is convinced she can be of use here, in this refugee camp teeming with people in the most desperate form of need.

Except it doesn’t go like she expects. The 20-somethings who have years of experience in this field keep chiding her to abide by the rules, something she finds chafing. She is told not to put a plaster on a skint knee, despite having a lifetime of medical expertise. She is asked not to hug and kiss the kids and show any favouritism. She doesn’t understand why these rules are in place, and finds them arbitrary, absurd and infantilising.

Also, she seems to be a lot less useful than she expected to be. The women’s sewing group is full of women who can all sew and speak together in a language Marisa doesn’t understand. Other volunteers have more experience than her, can speak fluently in more languages, and look like they belong here. What exactly is Marisa bringing to the table?

It’s impossible to watch La Voluntaria without talking about white saviour complex. Why does Marisa think they need her there? Does she think all these people have just been sitting around waiting for her to turn up to solve their problems? What makes her think she has any of the answers? She has no idea about what their lives have been like, and she doesn’t even speak the language. It’s an impossible leap of presumption that could only occur growing up white in the West, of having spent your life having it constantly reinforced to you that you and people like you are where solutions come from, and others and their lives are where problems come from.

Without any self-reflection on these underlying assumptions, it could be easy to dislike Marisa, were it not for her deeply sincere wish to do good, to be of help and service to those she meets. She is trying to do what is right, and doesn’t see why that shouldn’t be a simple thing. Credit also has to go to Carmen Machi, who plays Marisa so openly and honestly.

Ultimately La Voluntaria follows that theme of individual moral good versus systems to a place of tense emotional jeopardy. Without quite understanding how, everything Marisa believes about herself and her actions gets turned on its head, selflessness becomes selfishness, aid becomes imperilment, and who is helping who is thrown into stark relief.

Phhffffftt!

This film hits like a sledgehammer.

Based on the true story of Maixabel Lasa, whose husband was killed by ETA and whose subsequent work supporting victims of violence led her to meet with her husband’s killers.

Now. I am actually a bad one for going into a story like this, because films about the effects of violence only seem to recognise it as violence when it’s wielded by those deemed ‘illegitimate’ actors. State violence is omnipresent and invisible in the way that fish have no word for water, but those who use similar tactics against the state are violent. So my worry was that was how this would all be framed.

But Maixabel specifically pushed for the inclusion of victims of all violence, including those of police and state forces. In the aftermath of years of violence and the legacy of fascism, she wanted a rehumanisation in how people saw each other. After decades of entrenchment along dividing lines, of ‘them and us’ mentality, she wanted people to look forward, build something beyond repeating what had gone before. She’s actually an extraordinary woman.

And this film does an excellent job of paying homage to that. Maixabel is played beautifully by Blanca Portillo, and Luis Tosar gives an extraordinary performance as Ibon Etxezarreta, the man who pulled the trigger.

Arguably Tosar has the harder job, because his character starts from such an unlikeable place. He starts not just as a killer, but is shown jubilant and carefree in the immediate aftermath of the murder, while Maixabel and her teenage daughter have their lives ripped apart. Even at the trial, he is defiant, unrepentant, chest-thumping, spouting ideological slogans. But the film follows his character arc, as he slowly, step-by-step, reconnects to his own basic humanity. The war he is involved in, whether it is legitimate or illegitimate, whether you see him as a soldier or a terrorist, has done what it always does. It has blunted him to empathy, to his own trauma in the acts he was involved in, to the impact upon his own sense of self. As much as sorrow for the victims of his crime is a huge motivating factor, his repentance is as much a rejection of the person who he used to be. In being able to see the humanity of his victims, he is able to see it in himself once more.

Despite all the weight of politics, this film is at base a deeply personal drama between these two characters. And one that is full of hope for healing, not just for the victims who need it most, but a collective healing.

Breathtaking film.