"Director Philippe Lacôte's film explores the challenges of storytelling in a society ridden with violence. By coupling the beauty of pre-colonial Africa with harsh reality and the appropriation of its own history, the director advances an autonomous African narrative. Dancing, chants, and moments of tenderness fill the spaces of the prison for the duration of the story, which shifts away from its narrator and thus - possibly? - saves his life. An unbearable reality gives rise to a 21st-century fairy tale, a chamber play in a lawless space, a search for values in a world that turns people into both perpetrators and victims."
