El Hadj studies in France and everything goes pretty well until he turns up six days late to renew his residency permit. He is immediately arrested and slides down the slippery slope into the exclusion and treatment reserved for enigmas. Having built his personal strength on the words of Lumumba, Sekou Touré, and the decolonisation heroes, he is completely destabilised. « L’Afrance’s » greatest quality is its simplicity, its humanity. The camera hugs the bodies, capturing their intimacy. This sincerity gives the film its true grace, but would have been better served by a slightly tighter montage. We feel El Hadj’s suffering as he see his image of himself fall apart, pushing him to do things that he would never have thought possible. It is in this tension and not by proposing ready-made solutions that the film finds its fine intensity.
