TONIGHT: "LA COMBATTANTE" ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE, 8.30pm
Tonight a documentary by Camille PONSIN (2020, 94 minutes) Vost, French
“La Combattante”: portrait of an ethnologist at the bedside of refugees from Darfur
Camille Ponsin has made a poignant documentary that tells the story of the work of Marie-José Tubiana, 90, with asylum seekers from this region of Sudan.
By Jacques Mandelbaum
Published on October 5, 2022 at 2:00 p.m.
THE OPINION OF “LE MONDE” – NOT TO BE MISSED
A long-time cinematographer, Camille Ponsin has been making documentaries for television since 2003. La Combattante is his first film to be released in theaters, and rightly so, given his happy discovery. What this documentary offers is not so much a revolution in the genre as a striking example of what cinema can do when the right people meet. Here, Ponsin himself, his quality of listening and writing, his discreet presence that cannot be forgotten behind the camera, his choice of a subject that will do a lot of good to those who discover it, in the middle of the raging ocean of permanent clash and triumphant egocentrism that our society has become in the era of deregulation and networks.
This is due, for the most part, to the magnificent person who lends herself to the game of this film, of whom we feel that she only consented on the condition of remaining herself, that is to say, of doing it less out of coquetry, the least of her worries, than for the cause she defends. Altruism, generosity, competence, modesty, dignity. Such people still exist, we did not really doubt it, but seeing them, in speech and in actions, reassures. It is almost a public hygiene measure that should be made mandatory. So we appointed Marie-José Tubiana, 90 years old at the time of filming – she was born in 1930 –, a retired CNRS ethnologist, a specialist in Darfur. By virtue of her incomparable knowledge of the subject, she is consulted by refugees who have been refused by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons and want to file an appeal with the National Court of Asylum.
The film takes place in Marie-José’s living room, where, pencil and notebook in hand, she receives and listens attentively to applicants whose applications have generally been rejected. The familiar setting smells of experience, the shelves are bulging with books, newspapers litter the tables, piles of files accumulate everywhere. Marie-José moves there with caution, modestly admitting a few memory lapses when she has to get her hands on a file, becoming once again of a formidable finesse and acuity in the dialogues she conducts with her visitors, with all the more relevance as she knows intimately the region from which they come, the conflict that tears it apart, the suffering and dereliction of the populations exposed there.
The use of archives is, in this respect, the obligatory passage of a film that aims to make us understand the fate of these refugees knocking at our doors. Their distribution in the narrative economy of the film is clear, precise, eloquent. The story begins in 1989, with the accession to power of Colonel Omar Al-Bashir in Sudan, which opens the country widely to the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and the jihadists. We can also see Osama Bin Laden smiling in an archive. Khartoum becomes the capital of the most radical Islamism in the Arab world. Massacres are very quickly committed against the African ethnic groups of Darfur, the Fur and then the Masalit.
In 2002, faced with these ethnic groups taking up arms against the government, the regime sets out to annihilate them. Heavy bombings on Sahelian villages are followed by raids by pro-government Arab militias, the Janjaweed, who, engaging in pillaging and rape, complete the massacre . The toll is estimated at 300,000 dead and nearly
Published on: February 27 2025
