Damien Monnier

“Four unaligned rows, 37 faces turned towards the camera lens. Autumn 1958, a family of Breton peasants in their Sunday best, gathered around the eldest. Smartly dressed for the photo. A modest living honestly earned by laborious work”. This is what the narrator proclaims at the beginning of the film, leading us to see things through his eyes. The photo, taken on the occasion of the golden wedding anniversary of the director’s grandparents, is the catalyst of Ordinary Landscape and the symbol of a way of life that is now gone.

This debut film by Alain Kassanda starts off as a process of self-examination: How well does he really know his grandparents? How true are his ideas about his birth country DR Congo, whose national identity was partly molded by the Belgian colonizers? And, by extension, how much does he know about himself? In Colette et Justin, Kassanda travels through time and his own past, in the process bringing postcolonial Congo to evocative life.