The River Where We Live

Once again, Sylvain L'Espérance proves that it is possible to make a political film without falling into dogmatism and catechism, imbuing his work with a sober poetry that leaves one contemplative and pensive.

The low water level of the interior delta of the Niger River, whose once nourishing waters are sinking and silting up more and more each year, is the image of the decline of the hopes of a humanity that is going down the drain. Whatever their profession, the people of the six countries bordering the river suffer the full force of climate change, which disrupts their secular way of life. Dugout boat builders, boat pilots, fish merchants, Fulani pastoralists, all of them are under pressure from the collapse of their only food resource, which is insidiously eroding the social fabric. Thus, the fisherman finds himself in the grip of a destructive system over which he has no control. Without escape, he suffocates in a slow torment. 

Carrying the viewer away in the often hypnotic course of its dollies, L'Espérance nevertheless presents us with human elegance at its most noble and most precarious. In fact, he wins his bet to show us "a human portrait of the river".

Richard Brouillette
Savior, filmmaker, producer, chicken farmer, and accountant