It’s All Good Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
If you think the healthcare system in the U.S. is bad, watch this film to learn about the health crisis in Venezuela. In It’s All Good you’ll meet two patients, an activist medicine smuggler, a doctor in training, and a pharmacist trying to stay afloat. They’re all trying to survive in a country where there is no medicine.
From: Venezuela, South America
Watch: Trailer, Rent on Amazon
Next: La Soledad, Theatre of War, Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Why Watch It’s All Good?
- See the effects of the medical crisis in Venezuela.
- For a real life apocalyptic scenario.
- Hear about patients stalking terminally ill patients just for the opportunity to get some medication.
- If you like role play and stage acting in documentaries.
The Breakdown
It’s all good starts with a pharmacist opening her pharmacy from behind her barred door. She receives a few customers passing by, but even though they all ask her for medicine, she can’t help any of them as she doesn’t have anything they are looking for. Plus due to political isolation of Venezuela, she can’t order them in either.
Next we meet a few patients diagnosed with cancer in a Alcoholics Anonymous style meeting shot in black and white. They patients reenact when they received their diagnosis – from the shock of hearing they have cancer to the joy that it can be cured to the horror that they cannot find the medicine they need to be cured. We also meet a training doctor in a clinic complaining that his $10 monthly salary isn’t enough to feed himself and that all his friends have left the country to become doctors elsewhere. Venezuela is not the place to be if you’re a doctor or a patient diagnosed with a curable disease.
Whilst it’s only a short film, clocking in at just over 1 hour, It’s All Good is dedicated to the people affected by the medical crisis in Venezuela. Instead of having a celebrity narrator to give us context to the crisis and bridge us to the people involved, we are directly connected to the people involved. Why include a middle man when you can hear from the people suffering. As a result, the issues feel more real and immediate; less like a long charity commercial and more like a real documentation of the crisis in Venezuela. It allows us to identify with the victims, rather than see them as people suffering in a country very far away from our own.
What to Watch Next
Firstly, if you want to see another great film featuring the Venezuelan crisis, check out La Soledad. It all takes place in a decaying colonial house reminiscent of King Louie’s temple in The Jungle Book.
If you like documentaries like It’s All Good which use creative ways to get people to tell their stories, check out Theatre of War by Lola Arias. It’s an Argentine film which brings soldiers from both sides of the Falkland’s War (Guerra de las Malvinas) together to try and get them to understand each other.
Or if you simply love a good documentary about people struggling to survive, you can check out Herzog’s Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Most of Herzog’s documentaries (and films) are great and this is one of the most epic true stories he captures on film.
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