François Magal

À l'aube du XXème siècle, dans une maison close à Paris, une prostituée a le visage marqué d'une cicatrice qui lui dessine un sourire tragique. Autour de la femme qui rit, la vie des autres filles s’organise, leurs rivalités, leurs craintes, leurs joies, leurs douleurs... Du monde extérieur, on ne sait rien. La maison est close.

Madagascar, nowadays. Kwame, 20, struggles to make a living in the clandestine sapphire mines. An unexpected event takes him back to his hometown. As he reunites with his mother and old friends, he finds himself confronted with the rampant corruption plaguing his country. He will have to choose between easy money and loyalty, between individualism and political awakening.

A mother and her two sons have waited for ten years for her husband and their father to return. One day a stranger arrives and approaches them.

In Reunion Island, green casuarinas are swept by trade winds. We skim the black sandy earth until we reach the center and come upon a stage, a "ron," where poets succeed one another to deliver their "fonnkers" and perpetuate the Creole language. Their bodies vibrate, their feet stomp the basaltic soil to invoke the secret tale. The poem thus becomes the ritual for an identity quest. Tonight is kabar night "Ôté fonnkézer. Rant dann ron, detak la lang, demay lo kèr!" (Oh Poet. Walk on stage, free your tongue, untangle your heart!) The texts of these poems have urged us to resist for the past forty years. Could their panting souls be whispering the possibility of resilience to our ears?