Dear Ancestor – Films – Visions du Réel

Cher Ancêtre

Nantenaina Lova
Réunion, Madagascar | 2026 | 71 min
International Premiere
Languages : French, Malagasy
Subtitles : French, English

2067. A mother tells her daughter about her ancestor’s struggle against a large-scale rare earth mining project in Madagascar, and the resistance of the people in the north of the Great Red Island, faced with the systematic plundering of natural resources in the name of the economic interests of the globalised North. Combining the fairytale tradition with direct cinema, Nantenaina Lova addresses the fighters of the present from the future.

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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Counting leaves, 2011
Red Heaven, 2009
Little Men, 2008
The Other Side, 2007
2 € in Madagascar, 2007