While Madagascar has done everything to forget this dark episode in its history, cinema has come to bury it: in Zanatany, the imprint of lonely shrouds, director Hachimiya Ahamada looks back on the massacre of Comorians perpetrated in December 1976, in the coastal town of Majunga. The short film, shot entirely on the island, has been traveling through international festivals since the beginning of the year and was screened for the first time in front of a Malagasy audience at the Alliance Française in Majunga.
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With our correspondent in Antananarivo, Sarah Tétaud
With great sobriety and infinite precautions, it is like a veil being lifted over a little-known tragedy. With his fiction drawn from real events, Hachimiya Ahamada recounts the gradual rise of tensions in a town of Majunga which suffered the full brunt of the social and political crisis of 1976. A dark and taboo episode in contemporary Malagasy history.
“ Ali, who is the main character of my film – a widowed Comorian who raises his two daughters alone – witnesses a neighborhood discord between two families in his neighborhood: one Malagasy and the other Comorian.says the director. And this dispute may be the spark that led to the execution of several Comorian families in Majunga. »
In a few days, the fraternal understanding that had existed for more than three generations exploded.
In one scene, a group of strikers chant in front of the workshop where Ali works: “ All united, all united, work for the Malagasy people! Work for the Malagasy! » « The Malagasy people are now in the minority in this workshop! Do you find that normal ? We know well that you and the others [Comoriens]you are better paid than us », berates the strike leader. “ This is not true! Comorian workers below the minimum wage. They accepted salaries lower than yours. They are the ones who should strike in your place », Ali gets angry.
Today, sources are divergent: it is estimated that between 500 and 2,000 Comorians died during three days of pogrom. Around 16,000 Comorians were hastily evacuated in the space of a month by the Belgian national company at the time, Sabena.
For the director and screenwriter, the first to tell these events in a cinematic way, it was necessary to pave the way: “ It’s still very sensitive to talk about this. There are people who don’t know this story. More than revealing, it is also sharing it so that others can tell, so that things become clearer about what happened there. People are getting older and time is running out. We need historians who take the time to find archives, gather testimonies, elements to get the truth.. »
A modest fiction, to tell, without bias, a Malagasy story.