Dir. Mark Henderson, UK, 2010, 90mins
Cast: Mark Henderson,
Review by Christopher Upton
Back at the turn of the millennium there were around 3,000 kidnappings a year in Columbia, so it would appear that not getting kidnapped if you were there would have been quite an achievement. Unfortunately for Mark Henderson and his group of fellow hikers they were not lucky and had to endure the terrifying ordeal of being held hostage for months in the Columbian jungle. What is unusual about Mark Henderson is that after his release, he stayed in email contact with one of the group, who had held them hostage.
Stranger still to an outsider is Mark’s choice to go back to the site of the ordeal to meet the titular kidnapper in an attempt to get some closure and hopefully understand the situation, which led to his abduction back in 2003.
My Kidnapper presents us with a situation you’d never imagine having access to- a chance for us to witness a victim meeting their kidnapper first hand. Mark’s desire for an explanation transports us to a rarely seen corner of the world and a country engaged in civil war bought about by drugs and militant fighting. This is a war that has engulfed the lives of countless innocents in the Columbian jungles and something that the group of kidnapped hikers are bought directly into contact with.
A meeting with a woman they had come to vilify and who became known as ‘the Witch’, because of the way she was complicit with the wishes of the hostage takers, is a moving experience for all involved. When the group discover just how limited her options were, they are forced to realise that, while this experience was terrifying for them, these people live this drama every day. This message is somewhat implicit in My Kidnapper as, because this is a film made by the person who was kidnapped and not a professional documentary maker , My Kidnapper cannot break his personal attachment to the events.
It may have been difficult, if not impossible, for anyone else to tell this story, but without the ability to detach oneself from the ordeal, there is no onus to look at anything beyond the immediately personal. That’s not to say that the incident couldn’t act as a good starting point for an investigation into the struggles of Columbia, but the chance is never capitalised upon. What always lurks in the background here is the story of dissidents, military personal and lives destroyed by in-country fighting; and unfortunately this never manages to make it to the foreground.
My Kidnapper is an extremely personal film and Mark Henderson’s understandable attachment to the event and his story means that it never develops into the documentary it could have been. While a trip first-hand into the events of those terrifying months is shocking to the viewer, not enough is given by way of an explanation. You feel this could be the fault of a cagey interviewee, but as Mark himself says, he feels that he needs more power to really pressure answers from his subject; a power which is sadly missing in the film.
