"Nothing grows here, neither the derision of the poor, nor the fat laughter of power". A text sews the whole film together, gathered in the evocative power of words. They concentrate the poetry of revolt and the violence of individual history with regard to collective history. To the brutality of destinies, the crudeness of the words responds. From the bridge between past and present, Zaho Zay tracks the trauma of Madagascar like that of childhood. Lullabies and childish tales awaken the bruises of small and big stories while in the fabric of images, gestures, traditions, know-how survive. Where the past imprisons, the images resist, the words resurrect.

Zaho Zay is an elegy in two movements. The first one follows the erratic figure of a murderer on the run who crosses different island realities. The second, with its documentary harshness, is tied around the frozen destiny of prisoners crammed into an overcrowded prison on the island. A lone female voice frames the two movements in the unity of the text and shapes the body of images with its silences and accents. It is the intimate address of a prison warden to her father, the escaped criminal, whose memory she calls up in the mythical guise of a Betsileo, an indigenous inhabitant of southeastern Madagascar. The text is rooted in the memory of this ghostly father, this murderer portrayed as a lone cowboy who plays dice with the fate of his victims. Reminiscences of childhood bring to mind images of the country's contradictory realities. In the dream, the film takes the generous and free form of a progression through associations that thwarts pure narrative logic. From the slammed life trying to subsist in an overcrowded and senseless prison system to the silk weavers, from the culture of Katrafay to the damaged landscapes and the hollowed-out hotels waiting for their rich clients, Zaho Zay delivers the present of an island marked by its colonial past, nostalgic for freedom and innocence. Zaho Zay or the mood of the Red Island. (C.L.)
Maéva Ranaïvojaona Georg Tiller

SPEC SHEET

Original version: French, Malagasy.
Subtitles: English, French.
Screenplay: Maéva Ranaïvojaona, Georg Tiller.
Author voice-over: Raharimanana.
Image: Georg Tiller.
Editing: Barbara Bossuet.
Music: Gahms, André Fèvre.
Sound: André Fèvre, Terence Meunier.
Starring: Nabiha Akkari, Eugène Raphaël Ranaïvojaona, Michelle Eva Ranaïvojaona.
Production: Subobscura Films (Maéva Ranaïvojaona & Georg Tiller), Tomsa Films (Thomas Lambert).
Distribution: Tomsa Films (Thomas Lambert).