Dear Ancestor – Films – Visions du Réel

Cher Ancêtre

Nantenaina Lova
Réunion, Madagaskar | 2026 | 71 min
Première Internationale
Sprachen : Französisch, Malagasy
Untertitel : Französisch, Englisch

2067. Eine Mutter erzählt ihrer Tochter vom Kampf ihrer Vorfahren gegen ein gross angelegtes Projekt zur Gewinnung Seltener Erden auf Madagaskar. Sie berichtet vom Widerstand der Menschen im Norden der roten Insel, die mit der systematischen Plünderung ihrer natürlichen Ressourcen im Namen der wirtschaftlichen Interessen des globalisierten Nordens konfrontiert waren. In einer Kombination aus Storytelling und Cinema Direct spricht Nantenaina Lova aus der Zukunft zu den Kämpfern der Gegenwart.

2067. On Réunion Island, to mark the 120th anniversary of the Malagasy anti-colonial uprising, a mother and her daughter pray to their ancestors from the neighbouring Madagascar so that they might continue living on this land devastated by a large-scale mining project. So begins the story of a struggle in which their ancestor, Dadabe, took part. For neocolonial history stutters on. The local fishing communities, already hit hard by the government-sanctioned Chinese vessels plundering fish stocks, have joined forces with the forest’s hunter-gatherers to oppose a new ecological disaster in the making: a mining complex aimed at extracting rare earth elements in southwestern Madagascar. Combining kabary (Malagasy oratory) with direct cinema, Nantenaina Lova chronicles his people’s resistance to the predatory logic of globalised capitalism. Recorded from the future to evoke a past mobilisation, Dear Ancestor ultimately reconnects with on-the-spot footage of Gen Z demonstrations in Antananarivo, for it is indeed today’s fighters that the film addresses.

Emmanuel Chicon

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