Film Archive

Jahr

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Zaho Zay

Zaho Zay
Maéva Ranaïvojaona, Georg Tiller
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Austria,
France,
Madagascar
2020
79 minutes
French,
Malagasy
Subtitles: 
English

“Zaho Zay!”, it’s me. This is the daily salute of the prisoners in a crowded Madagascan prison whose guard looks for her lost father in each new prisoner. Her projections and fantasies let the mystical, murderous father figure roam the island in simultaneously dreamlike and nightmarish sequences, accompanied by a poetic voiceover. A hybrid narrative, speculating about the mysterious paths and profound traumas of its landscapes and all who walk in them.

A pair of dice, a quiet murderer and his victims, traces of history and magic realism. Rituals and riddles, revenge, remorse and imprisonment are unravelled and re-interlaced between the brutal reality of a detention centre, the fantasies of the fictionalised narrator and the vast natural spaces of an island – slowly and poetically. Crises, colonial violence and its continuities are suggested and condensed. The montage of documentary material and staged sequences references western and film noir and develops an intense visual and narrative pull. An almost lyrical text and the precisely framed images bear witness to an impossible quest that’s actually a haunting, referring to individual and collective traumas and the strange forces with which such shocks inscribe themselves into narratives and places.
Djamila Grandits

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Maéva Ranaïvojaona, Georg Tiller
Script
Maéva Ranaïvojaona, Georg Tiller
Cinematographer
Georg Tiller
Editor
Barbara Bossuet
Producer
Georg Tiller, Maéva Ranaïvojaona
Co-Producer
Thomas Lambert
Sound
André Fèvre, Térence Meunier, Herimandresy Randriambololona
Score
André Fèvre