In the 1970s, a little boy grows up between a military father and a whimsical mother (played by the vibrant Nadia Tereszkiewicz). This toddler is Robin Campillo, the filmmaker of 120 beats per minute who, six years after this film, drew on his childhood memories to make The Red Island. “It’s not an autobiographical film,” says the filmmaker. I wanted to rediscover the sensory universe of the young hero rather than concentrating on historical reality. »
The toddler, unaware of what colonialism is, perceives the injustices and the revolt that rumble among the Malagasy. He feels that the paradise he shares with a playmate is going to be taken away from him and takes refuge in a fictional world where he becomes ghost, his favorite heroine. He loves it so much that he has the costume sewn by his mother, cosplay before his time! This sensitive chronicle about a child struggling to understand the world of adults around him takes the viewer from comical anecdotes to more serious scenes. We smile when the hero’s father offers him baby crocodiles and we sympathize when the kid understands that his family will have to leave.
The Red Island evokes the nostalgia of childhood innocence while underlining the absolute necessity for the Malagasy to reclaim their beautiful country. Robin Campillo manages to evolve as a tightrope walker between these two poles, which is the strength of a tender and hard film, devoid of Manichaeism. It captures both the end of an era and the beginning of a new era.