Faces of the Enemy

Who are our enemies? How and why do we transform them, and they us, into monsters? In what way does the picture of the enemy create an atmosphere in which conflicts are intensified instead of prevented? In an oppressive series of propaganda pictures among which anti-Semitic films produced by the Nazis, Russian and American cartoons, Japanese posters, American war-movies, and pictures from archives of the cold war and Vietnam, we can see how the enemy is dehumanized and made into a dangerous imbecile, a fiend. Through comments and fragments of interviews with people who are engaged in the phenomenon of the image of the enemy from various, whether or not professional, lines of approach, the makers of this film demonstrate the way in which a created idea of an enemy can take root in the individual and develop into an obsession, leading up to violence. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)