Yesterday I watched Eric Daniel Metzgar’s newest film Reporter, which follows Pulitzer Prize-winning NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as he traverses the world to cover human rights issues and conflict. The primary journey profiled in the film is a 2007 trip to the Congo. That country has been plagued by poverty and fighting between a multitude of local militias that answer to no government. As Kristof is best known for raising the Darfur genocide to public awareness in the West, so he is trying to do again with the Congolese conflict, where some 4 million have died due to fighting, rape and starvation. One of the most tense scenes in the film is when Kristof, traveling with two aspiring reporters and the film crew, meet with one of the leader of the most feared militia, General Nkunda.

Much of the fighting in Congo is a remnant from the Rwandan conflict of 1994. Some Hutus, the aggressors in the genocide there, fled to Congo and angry Tutsi fighters followed to continue the fight. Nkunda and his followers are Tutsi, and so they would have us believe in their meeting with Kristof, Christians on a divine mission. They proudly sport their “Rebels for Christ” pins in one of the few humorous moments in Reporter.

I’m sure that the title, Senator Obama Goes to Africa, is intended to invoke if not the letter, the spirit, of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. After all, if he’s “going,” then it’s “Obama Goes to Washington,” and as it so happens, he goes by way of Africa. The doc feels like a bunch of YouTube clips strung together into a movie, but as an Obama supporter, I have to say, I find value in that. There are critics of Obama that attack his class and color. Those are meaningless measures of a man, except wherein they shape his point of view. I think this movie could help people who are skeptical of him to see him in a new light.

To watch Obama in Kenya, where his father was from and where his sister and grandmother still live (I’m wondering how many wives his father had?), is to see a fish to water. He identifies with the people so fully. He understands the history of their country and where they are today. He is empathetic in a way that few American presidents have shown for any people, let alone Africans. He displays a JFK aura as he addresses huge crowds who have come out for a glimpse of this Son of Kenya who has made good, and then taken the time to come home and sit with his countrymen to try to understand their needs. He says openly that he wants to shape American foreign policy so that it furthers the goals of these countries (he also visits South Africa and a Darfur refugee camp), instead of keeping them under the proverbial American thumb or worse, not caring enough to even address the issues.

We all saw the image of 200,000 Germans filling Tiergarten Park in Berlin to see Obama. What about an entire shanty town in Kenya? Can you imagine that everywhere this man goes, people greet him as though he is some kind of savior? This is some serious shit. Truth be told, I’m worried for him. Men who display this kind of power to connect have often been targets of assassins, but I hope that won’t be the case. I’m voting for Obama, and while this movie wasn’t the tipping point for me, maybe it will be for you.

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Thanks to First Run Features for allowing embeddable video! Excellent choice.