In the Billowing Night

This riveting hybrid documentary blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction, history and the present, colonial and post-colonial, surreal and reality, long form and short form, all in a way that very few films are able to. As viewers we get a front row seat to the state of “in betweenness”, as espoused by our protagonist who moved to France from Reunion in his late teens; he never felt French but questioned his own ties to Reunion and the colonial past of the island.

The film does a perfect job of narrating some of the current effects of colonialism and slave-trade on the African continent, Reunion being used as the case study. Generations of people across the African continent have experienced displacement, including those who remained in Africa and its neighboring islands. The feeling of great loss, including loss of identity, loss of histories and loss of one’s place in both the temporal and spatial worlds, are suffered by our protagonist who recounts his life journey to his daughter hoping she gets to live in a better world than he did, accomplishing a lot more than he was able to. The film depicts the hope of de-traumatization for a new generation.

Badewa Ajibade

Guest curator