- Starring
- Katja Herbers, Genio de Groot, Rein Hofman
- Writer
- Daan Windhorst
- Director
- Ivo van Aart
- Rating
- n/a
- Running Time
- 86 minutes
- Release Date
- n/a
Overall Score
Rating Summary
This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Chicago Film Fest, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” We’ve all heard this line, usually as children and usually as a way to try and comfort us in the face of negative words from others. But the sad reality is that words can be just as damaging. The Columnist turns the tables on online trolls and attacks them with satirical venom and violence to gleefully fun effect.
The Columnist follows Femke Boot (Herbers), an author and columnist for a newspaper in the Netherlands. The film opens with Femke pleading on a national television show for everyone to just be nice, even if they disagree. Regardless of her simple pleas for civility, she still receives hateful messages and death threats on Twitter and Facebook every day. But then she reads one disgusting message too many and snaps. Herbers is absolutely fantastic in her role as Femke. She nails the gradual unwinding of Femke’s psyche and the ferocity of her actions when she decides to do something about the hate.
An army of internet trolls has become one of the biggest plagues of our modern society. Social media and anonymity allow awful people to say awful things with no consequence. Director Ivo van Aart and writer Daan Windhorst point out how free speech does not equate to a freedom from consequences for that speech, which is the caveat that so many people fail to understand about that freedom. Freedom of speech does not guarantee a person a platform or a lack of consequences.
The Columnist strikes with the force of a frying pan to the side of a Twitter troll’s head. Anchored by an excellent turn from Katja Herbers, it speaks to the harm caused by free speech when wielded without dignity.
still courtesy of Fantasia Festival
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