In the Shade of Sugar Canes

  • Lonbraz Kann
Genre : Drama
Type : Fiction
Original title : A l'ombre des cannes | Shadows of the Sugarcane
Principal country concerned : Column : Cinema/tv
Year of production : 2013
Format : Feature
Running time : 88 (in minutes)
http://www.lonbrazkann.com

Marco, Bissoon and their friends worked for the sugar factory all their lives. The factory is due to close, the cane is being felled for the last time, their horizons will be utterly changed. Caught up in the events, none of them is properly prepared for the all too predictable collapse of their world. Sugarcane is no longer viable, soon there will be only a golf course and luxury villas where it stood. In this end-of-an-era ambience an enigmatic woman, Devi, moves into a house opposite the old camp where Marco and Bissoon still live. She has come with her husband, the authoritarian overseer of the demolition site. Devi intrigues Marco, who has plenty of time for reflection thanks to his enforced retirement. What is she doing in this sinister, forsaken place? What does her haughty and scornful manner conceal? For Bissoon, however, the closure of the factory brings bitter realization of the failure of his life. He watches powerlessly as the bulldozers waltz around the fields he was still cultivating only a few months before. Before his very eyes this fertile and once nourishing land is being turned into a playground that will be trodden by the most expensively shod feet on the planet. Around Marco and Bissoon, their former work mates are also trying to find new ways to make ends meet. Ah-Yan, keeper of the village store, where the whole workforce used to set the world to rights, is departing for the new world. Rosario is putting all the energy of his despair into an attempt at regeneration, Annath prefers to go it alone and count on his political connections, while Zéponz, for all his loud mouth and massive frame, suffers in silence. After fighting for others for so long, after so many struggles for workers' rights, he feels abandoned and powerless. How can you survive your own history, the humiliation and the disintegration of social relations? How can you re-invent yourself when things are collapsing all around you? LOMBRAZ KAN is not a nostalgic picture, there is no intention of idealizing a past which brought more than its share of suffering and misery. The idea is to tell a story from close up to the people involved, a modern history, that belongs to our time. A portrait of a society lost between tradition and modernity, an untypical view of a country whose enduring image of picture-postcard paradise has so long conveyed the idea that, whatever happens, people here live content. A film by David Constantin Mauritius · 2014 - Feature - Color · 88' Director''s note We wanted Lombraz Kan to be far more than an anecdote from a distant corner of the world, we wanted it to speak of a universal reality. The characters find themselves suddenly trapped between inescapable modernity and living conditions they find it all the harder to accept. Through the perfect storm that cuts down the last sugarcane and then tears up the roots of these different lives, a humanity stronger than all before it is revealed. These men were united in their labor, they will stand united as things collapse. Directing David Constantin. Script by Sabrina Compeyron et David Constantin. Production Caméléon production 20, royal rd Belle Etoile david@cameleonprod.com Coproduction Digital studio Route royale Pointe aux sables jeromevalin@orange.mu Shooting place Mauritius Shooting start date 12/2013 Expected completion date 09/2014 Budget 464'622 Euro Financing in place 200'000 Euro Co-Poduction : Caméléon Production (Mauritius) Atopic (France) Lithops Films (Reunion Island) Iris Imaginacoes (Mozambique) Financed by : ACP Culture+ . Implemented by the ACP Secretariat . Funded by the European Union OIF-Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie The Global Film Initiative (USA) Board of Investment (Mauritius) Supported by : Culture & Avenir (Mauritius) | Stubborn in Dreams (Mauritius) Production Company''s Profile Caméléon Production is the only Mauritius company involved in film development. Producing a first full-length feature is a logical step forward in the company's growth, following its involvement in a number of documentaries and short subjects. Caméléon Production is also working on the setting up of a regional production network in the Indian Ocean. Filmography (Caméléon Production) Made in Mauritius (2009) Ansam-Ensemble Collections de courts-métrages (2007-2011) Les Mo'zar de Roche Bois (2011) ______________________ IT Mauritius · 2014 - Colore · 88' Regia David Constantin Produzione Caméléon production 20, royal rd Belle Etoile david@cameleonprod.com

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