Yzanakio

Ma traversée is a personal quest, filmed over 20 years, recounting the racial issues and privileges that have punctuated the filmmaker’s life in three French-speaking societies: Guadeloupe, France and Quebec. From her own story emerges the broader narrative of colonization, colorism, assimilation, integration and the social benefits of “race” and their impact even today. Brutalized by police officers in Montreal in December 2017 in front of witnesses, the filmmaker takes a step back to understand this gesture, which speaks to the social interpretation of skin color.

When ten-year-old Birahima’s mother dies, he leaves his native village in Guinea, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima becomes a child-soldier. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment and madness but somehow manages to retain his own sanity.

In the mid-1970s, Rico, a 9-year-old Haitian boy, was brutally torn from his native land along with Erzulie, his mother, to a strange planet called Canada. Since their arrival, a distance seems to have grown between mother and son. To regain the love of his mother, Rico will have to understand this New World populated by individuals with strange habits and customs. Fortunately for him, he can count on Kana, his imaginary friend who comes straight out of Haitian mythology.

Valentine and Jean-Claude start a new life in Kigali with their newborn baby, Justice. Their country, already battered by racial propaganda and brutality, finally seems ready for peace and justice.

Ibuka follows Valentine and Jean-Claude, a new couple, at the very beginning of the civil war and the massacres that swept through Rwanda in 1994. Living in Kigali, the national capital, these young parents make numerous attempts to escape the killings with their newborn. Ibuka is a poetic work filled with tenderness and clarity about a historical tragedy, experienced through the intimacy and formation of a young family forever bonded.

Nantali Indongo, the rapper of the group Nomadic Massive, has long refrained from using the word Bitch in the lyrics of the songs she sings. As an Afro-descendant and mother, she considers that this word’s purpose has always been to dehumanize the Black woman. However, at the junction of the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, she decided for the f irst time to use the b-word as a cry from the heart in her song Time . Aware of the complexity posed by the trivialization of this word, she embarked on a “word movie” across the Americas to understand the origins of the word and its many connotations over time. Her journey allowed her to give a voice larger- than-life to Black women, so that they could themselves express their opinions on the word bitch.

Jeanne is a black artist in her sixties who hasn't had the career she'd hoped for. She has fallen into a deep depression. Bitter, she is unable to communicate with her thirty-year-old daughter, whose mere presence reminds her of her failures. Will she be able to rise above her bitterness to start living again and break out of her solitude? Perhaps one day.

Haitian history is presented through an explosion of colour, dance and music, as the country prepares for its legendary carnival.

The film features emblematic figures of the fight against police brutality in France: Ramata Dieng, sister of Lamine Dieng, Assa Traoré, sister of Adama Traoré, as well as Mahamadou Camara, brother of Gaye Camara, Farid El Yamni, brother of Wissam El Yamni, and Awa Gueye, sister of Babacar Gueye. The film also includes rare intimate interviews of young men of color from 'Banlieues' (working class neighborhoods) who expose how they have endured police repression throughout their lives and how it has impacted them.