Babel XIII

Joris Lachaise takes us to Thiaroye, in a suburb near Dakar, to enter the psychiatric hospital accompanied by writer and filmmaker Khady Sylla who has been admitted there several times. She meets up with her doctor, familiar patients and others with whom she discusses the delicate issue of therapeutic methods and their link with colonialism. The project is clearly ambitious, it combines the description of a place with portraits of beings marked by suffering, it blends the spectacle of different types of care (religious, traditional, modern) with considerations concerning the multiplicity of such care since we are present during discussions between marabouts and modern doctors about the possible coexistence of their practices. What remains of madness? Anything but meagre remnants: chaos, an uproar of silence and diatribes, a disturbing world where every- thing remains to be deciphered.