Espoir voyage
Director: Michel K. Zongo
France, Burkina, 2011 (European Premiere)

Michel Zongo sets out on a reconnaissance mission to the Ivory Coast where his brother Joanny was headed long ago, never to return.

A mother’s message: “If you don’t have any affection for me, I have affection for you… When life is a dead end, one must turn around.”

Zongo boards a bus packed with goods without even a photo of his brother. Just his fate. He learns that Joanny was a good looking man, very elegant, who walked like a Hindi. Brave, strong. Very clean and fond of women. A man who worked hard and died alone at his place after a sudden illness.

Families don’t understand. Parents don’t receive letters. Life is hard.

“We’re not like Europeans, who remember a hundred years. Here people die and we move on.”

Berlinale Section: Forum