29.03.2019. Review by Jonas van Stam. This review is inspired by the true story of TIC’s Movie Night on March the 29^th, by then still the warmest day of 2019.

We cycled to Cinecitta right before sunset. We did this, not knowing yet exactly what kind of movie we were about to witness. We had been so busy having a nostalgic evening with our honoured guest and former tíc member who moved back to the US, Mike Ahern who, needless to say; also joined the movie night (some say he actually came back to Tilburg from the US for it), that we did not manage to watch the trailer of A private war before entering the cinema.

A private war, as I know now, depicts some of the most pivotal reporting assignments of the career of Sunday Times’ foreign correspondent Marie Colvin, and the personal toll they took. The film was rather impressive and surprisingly good, and the element of not having read up about the movie combined with my ignorance considering the existence of the main character, made it even more so. Marie Colvin was (sorry: unavoidable spoiler) a war correspondent, specializing in middle eastern conflict, and famous for reporting on the conflicts in East Timor and Sri Lanka, the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libiya (having interviewed Gaddafi twice) and finally the siege of Homs in Syria.

It does not take much imagination to understand that the harsh reality of the setting in which she worked, and thus what was displayed in the movie, left us somewhat disarranged at the end. Comforted by a variety of drinks (no, I’m just saying people had different drinks), we talked about it and concluded that it was a rather impressive movie, with good acting, and a –to say the least- remarkable and eccentric main character.

The conversation couldn’t just go from the upsetting reality of countries in war to how good the weather was that day in Tilburg (although that would’ve certainly been a very Dutch thing to do), there was a topic in between. This topic being the event a tíc team is going to join in on: The Night of the Refugee charity walk.

And from that moment on, everything happened very quickly: someone instantly financially supported one of the charity walkers who was present, then someone else made a bolt statement of also joining up, after which a third person made a slightly less bolt statement of not nót joining up, and before I knew it, it was my turn to make a statement. Easy choice: I joined up as well. Of course, also with the movie still very much present in my memory.

So, all and all a rather eventful Movie Night with a sequel: walking on the Night of the Refugee on the 15^thof June.

#TilburgInternationalclub #Expatlife #movienight #aprivatewar #Cinecitta