Say what you will about the living legend, Raymond Depardon's career as a photojournalist, you can't deny that he is a master who spent a lot of his life filming places and people all his life. But not many acknowledge his works as a documentary filmmaker with incredible titles. I have not seen everything he has made, but this film has been in my memory for a long time, especially the sequence of Nelson Mandela who would become, a few months later, the first black president of South Africa. As someone who has been revisiting classics for the last few years, i spent weeks viewing some ethnographic films made across the world. I felt compelled to write a short review for this gem that nobody else had bothered to do so!
One could easily get the wrong impression of the film being a travelogue, maybe self indulgent diary or an arthouse documentary. True, it is based on the filmmaker personal experience traversing through the African landscapes. But it has lot to expose, Depardon shot everything by himself with no assistants over the course of the voyage. We follow his camera as he halts at different locations to take the sight. He visited South Africa, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, and Egypt, and raises existential questions, the harsh reality of the regions as a filmmaker and as a critique/lover of the African continent.
While there is so much to say about this breathtakingly beautiful work, it does have some excellent moments. I feel it is best to experience it as it is so difficult to jot down each and every places shown in the film and the subtexts that follow. Sure, the long takes, interruptions can be excessive at times, but the film will definitely keep you invested. There are so many visuals on how the mainstream media perceives Africa but i wish you see this once to have a different opinion on the continent. This documentary easily stands out as one of the best by Raymond Depardon and i hope many will see this.
