Le Paradis des enfants
Nissane Coulibaly
Belgium, Burkina Faso | 2019 | 43 min
World premiere
Languages : Bambara, Fulfulde
Subtitles : French, English
A man returns to Bamako, the city of his childhood, and perceives in the streets—fleeing like a shadow in the night—the face of what he was in the past: a lost child. His voice then merges with that of the street children, like an echo that repeats the same story, like a fatal fate that marks bodies through time. These children forgotten by all, these children who roam the labyrinthine alleys of the markets, who are beggars until adolescence and then become thieves, gang leaders or protectors to a new generation of orphans. The film follows the day-to-day of Modibo who recounts, as if he were the hero of an epic tale, the long journey he had to make in order to arrive in the big city, the constant violence, the fear, and the impossibility of returning to the family home where nobody wants him anymore. The voice of the lost children resonates like a mournful echo that testifies to the most unjust misery, but that also makes itself heard like an act of resistance. Because these children do not want our pity. Because these children are capable of dreaming, even in the darkest of nights. A tale onthe strength of survival. A song of hope.
Elena López Riera
