The Maribor Uprisings is an interactive documentary about the protests in Maribor, Slovenia. The film was presented at Union Docs by directors Maple J. Razsa and Milton Guillen as a live participatory event wherein the whole audience participates with each other in the decision-making process of the interactive documentary.

The story itself is very simple. It’s a story of corruption in government ranging from exclusionary legislation to embezzlement countered by the people of Maribor demanding accountability. Their demands and their anger evolved into organized and guerilla protests against the Slovenian political elite. The protests spanned the sum of four months and amounted to 80 hours of footage for the directors to navigate. They explained their choice for an interactive documentary as the footage itself demanding a voyeuristic experience. They wanted to create an experience which echoed global uprisings and our insurgent generation.

Before the film began, the directors explained the decision-making process. Throughout the story we were given checkpoints with two choices on how the story would unfold. We had to democratically and collectively decide which choice to make. The legitimacy of the democratic process can be argued since the directors still had the primary power over the process and made the executive decisions over the progression of choices. This point, however, supports the primary thesis of the film: the interactions between the audience and the directors, the roles each audience member inferentially plays, and the debates between audience members reflect the same social dynamics which take place during actual protests. One definitive choice the directors made to counter the reality of an apparent power hierarchy within protests was to give priority to femmes and people of color during discussions. The directors also explained if people feel they can easily speak up in crowds, they should give room to people who find it difficult to speak. Concurrently, people who find it difficult to speak in large crowds should challenge themselves and make choices for the audience. Once the rules were set, the directors prefaced the start of the film and said there is “no way back from the chaos.” Then the film began.

As a viewer, we were led and woven between traditional talking head interviews with people affected by the corrupt government and verite footage. A narrator led us through the experience by first asking us to participate in the journey. The verite footage is left as long-takes shot on a wide angle lens allowing the viewer to explore the screen and inhabit the experience of the protests.

Our first checkpoint during the film came up when a group of people roll a barrel of hay through the protest. The narrator instructs us to make a decision between finding out why the protesters are rolling hay versus continuing the fight. As the film pauses, the lights dimly come on and the director Maple J. Razsa, who is our primary guide throughout the film, asked for a count of who wants to follow the hay or the protest. On-screen there are two arrows corresponding with our two choices. Over the course of the journey, there were a handful of people who made the majority of the decisions for the group. So in this way, the participatory, collective aspect of the documentary still echoed the social dynamics of the physical world. Despite the instructions given, many people still dominated the discussions and shy people were still reluctant to state their opinion. For this particular checkpoint, we decided to follow the hay.

Another checkpoint of the film was the decision between safety and support for our people or to forge ahead with more violent protests. At this point in the film, the verite footage of the protests became more violent. After the votes were counted for this checkpoint, the director claimed we reached a perfect split and asked for two people of each opposing side to argue why their choice was the superior choice. Both arguments reduced the complex nature of participating in a protest toward a binary discussion of dominance or subservience. Both arguments fought against one another and made claims that either protests are about the fight or a moralization of the people who found efficacy in violent protests. After a tense discussion, we re-voted. The choice for safety won.

The other memorable checkpoint was when the narrator asked the audience if we wanted to see what it was like to be the predator, to see through the camera on the helicopter. The narrator stated she cannot say where they got the footage but the footage is from the policing helicopter. The crowd unanimously chose to watch the helicopter footage which painted the protest in infrared sensor with a crosshair predominantly placed in the center of the screen.

There is no clear and definitive resolution to the film but just an end. When the lights came on, the director Razsa made an inflammatory claim and instigating question of what’s the difference between “good and bad protests?” This question ignited many strong opinions from people in the audience who supported their opinion with how we as a group made the decisions we did during the film. The first person who spoke made a passionate and myopic reprehension against the people who voted for safety at that particular checkpoint. She flouted the people for choosing safety and claimed this choice was tantamount to acquiescence to the dominating power.

Her comment spearheaded the discussion of the unethical nature of the question of good versus bad protests. This film overall, and the participatory nature of the film, demonstrates that the dominating power is still present during protests by proxy of fights between people protesting for the same cause. In order to subvert the default patriarchal nature of interpersonal relations, we need to follow the same guides laid out by the directors during a protest: allow room for others, give priority to the marginalized, and work as a collective. Antithetical to working as a collective are the questions of who made the right choices during the film versus who did not. This sentiment echoes similar questions during protests of who made the right choices during the protest and who did not. Debates between violence and safety should not be debates of a superior of strategy but should be conversations of shared strengths.

There are many other films within this footage we did not see both in the cutting of the footage and the possibilities of films through the many combinations of given choices. But in reality, the checkpoints which felt like choices were actually manipulations. One of the directors commented on how the arrows are actually designed on-screen to make one arrow more appealing than the other. Other ways the directors coerce a choice onto the audience is by sheer entertainment manipulations. Audiences often lean toward the more sensationalist, entertaining choice. The directors stated audiences almost always choose to follow the barrel of hay. Their reasoning, which is a fair and obvious point, is audiences want to follow the entertainment and lead with their curiosity. The hay is also moving in the same direction as the arrow so these two pieces in concert catch the audience’s attention more than the other darker arrow on the other side of the screen.

So if the film is made by the directors, the discussions and parameters of discussions are led by the directors, and the choices are actually manipulated coercions, is the film actually a participatory democracy? Or does the insidious controlling nature of this progressive film echo the same reality present in politics and protests? Even if we fight back and organize can we actually democratically make a positive impact or are we only led to believe we have political agency? Finally, even if we are the most radical of protesters, do we still wonder what it would be like to view a protest as an oppressor, in the helicopter, with the infrared sensors?