I learned about slavery from Hollywood. Why is French cinema so slow to depict our own colonial crimes? | Rokhaya Diallo

FThe involvement of Rance in the transatlantic slave trade was historically among the most important in Europe. After Great Britain, France had the second largest colonial empire. We know that 1.38 million people were expelled in at least 4,220 French slave trade expeditions. However, the stories of the life of these people are almost entirely absent from the French collective imagination.

Having grown up in France, the only images of this crime against humanity that I have never seen on the screen were in films made in the United States. I learned it on this subject of the roots of the 1970s television series and the film by Steven Spielberg, Amistad. Today, in France, Hollywood films such as 12 years, a slave or a Django Unchained are always the references when it comes to representing the horrors experienced by slaves.

Despite the efforts of French filmmakers with personal stories rooted in slavery – like Guadepellean Christian Lara (Vivre Libre or Die, 1980, Bitter Sugar, 1998) or Martinican Guy Deslauriers (Passage du Midr way,, 2000) – Slavery as a French phenomenon remains almost invisible on our screens. Paradoxically, the first public and successful shooting in the context of French Caribbean slavery (Case Depart, 2011) was a comedy that failed to engage with the structural nature of the oppression it represented.

So when I was finally able to see a story on the big screen on the victims of French slavery, established in the French colonies, the effect was deeply moving. The filmmaker Simon Moutaïrou told me when I interviewed him last year about No Chains No Masters: “As a young film buff, I have always been struck by the absence of this subject – slavery, brown – In French cinema. “”

For the first time in the French film, the history of the victims of slavery in the 18th century – on the Ile de France (now Mauritius) in the Indian Ocean, then a possession of the French Crown – was being told. Beyond its polished aesthetics, which depicts black bodies in an unusually sublime way, the director’s decision to focus on brown – The escape of the slaves of the property of their oppressors – the inclusion of African languages ​​such as Wolof and the addition of a spiritual dimension all give this film a unique tone.

Only this year, a biopic was finally dedicated to a monumental figure, which should be a source of French national pride. With Fanon, the filmmaker Guadepepean Jean-Claude Barny (director of Tropiques Amers, a 2007 television miniserie in slavery in Martinique) brings his cinematographic talent to the extraordinary history of Frantz Fanon.

Fanon, a psychiatrist of Martinican origin, wrote on the psychological effects of colonialism – from his experience as a caregiver in Algeria – but he also walked.

He joined the Algerian Revolution against France and became a spokesperson for the FLN (National Liberation Front). Fanon died in 1961, a year before the release of Algeria in 1962 – but in only two books, he managed to inspire the release and anti -colonial movements around the world. And yet, in France, not a single school bears its name. In 2019, the Bordeaux Municipal Council – a city deeply mired in the legacy of slavery, colonization and exploitation of Martinique and its people – approved a proposal to appoint an alley after Fanon, but the mayor, Alain Juppé, a former Prime Minister, canceled the initiative.

Barny’s moving film begins with the arrival of Fanon in Algeria and traces the painful journey of a committed psychiatrist, body and soul, to a country fighting to free itself from colonial domination. The film creates a powerful resonance between two territories – the native Martinique of Fanon, shaped by slavery and Algeria, brutally invaded and repressed by French troops in 1830.

Despite the fact in front of the anti-black, Fanon took notes throughout his mission, documenting with surgical precision the colonial situation which would give birth to his most powerful work: the miserable of the earth. The film does not omit the precious contribution of Fanon’s wife, Josie Fanon, because it captures the first emouts of the Revolution. He immerses us in the weight and torment of oppression – palpable and always present. The daily reality of deadly and insane repression is naked in its gross brutality. But, like the words of Fanon – woven in the very structure of the film – remind us: “The colonized is dominated but not domesticated.”

The effects of slavery and colonialism are still visible in the ancient colonies which are now French departments in its own right and suffer from the same flagrant abandonment. In Guadeloupe, incredibly high unemployment has left many young people in a state of despair and dismay.

Nelson Foix, a Guadepean filmmaker, devoted his new Zion film to young people on the island, attracted by delinquency in a place where opportunities are rare. In a captivating thriller pulled in Creole and supported by an entirely local production – including the producer based in Paris, Laurence Lascary, which is the Guadelopeen heritage – Foix paints a brutal portrait of an island still taken in a colonial dynamic.

Under the cover of a gangster story – with firearms and high -speed prosecution – sion exposes the cost of high living, constant water shortages, social uprisings, the repression of the police And poisoning compatible with the state of the terrain with a toxic pesticide called Chlordone, used in banana plantations. All this is imbued with a mysticism that mixes Catholicism and ancestral beliefs, resulting in a dazzling cinematographic experience.

It is a relief to finally see new films depicting France through a different objective, although I cannot help deplore their invisibility during the most prestigious window events – like Cannes. These films are always pushed to the margins of a public space which is clearly not ready to make room for late and convincing stories.

However, despite a limited theatrical release – and the suggestions of a “boycott” by certain cinemas – the remarkable Fanon benefits from the public success it deserves.

As for Moutaïrou, he launched two stars of white cinema – Camille Cottin (known for the international television tube Call My Agent) and Benoît Magimel – in the support roles, but the media coverage of this cinematographic event was surprisingly minimal. According to the filmmaker, social media allowed the film to find its audience.

After having broken records at the box office in the French West Indies before its release in continental France, Zion became the surprise success of the year. For once, the French Caribbean islands are indicated without the usual accent on the perfect landscape by postcard.

While colonial history remains a blind spot for French cinema, the public is more than ready to face it – And there is no talent shortage to get there.