Join us for an afternoon screening of the film Colette and Justin, followed by a discussion and Q&A with the filmmaker reflecting on the films themes.

Colette and Justin is an evocative, poetic and thoughtful meditation on the intersection of political and family history, and the multi-generational destructive reach of colonialism.

Film duration: 88mins

Colette and Justin

This debut film by Alain Kassanda starts off as a process of self-examination: How well does he really know his grandparents? How true are his ideas about his birth country DR Congo, whose national identity was partly molded by the Belgian colonizers? And, by extension, how much does he know about himself? In Colette et Justin, Kassanda travels through time and his own past, in the process bringing postcolonial Congo to evocative life.

He gets his grandfather Justin and grandmother Colette to reflect on their lives, from their youth to their first encounter with a complex political period. The first years following Congo’s independence pass by in the form of a richly layered history that intertwines good and evil, and in which Justin is destined to have an important role. The deep imprints left by colonialism are a constant presence.

Kassanda successfully re-casts major political developments in the context of an intimate family film, with lively archive footage, the director’s own enriching memories and curiosity, as well as a poetic voice-over.

You can watch the trailer here.

Alain Kassanda

Born in Kinshasa, Alain Kassanda left the DRC for France at the age of 11. After studying communication, he has been staging cycles of movie showings in various Parisian theaters. He then became the programmer of an art house cinema for five years, in the suburbs of Paris, before moving to Ibadan, in southwestern Nigeria, from 2015 to 2019.

There he directed Trouble Sleep, a medium-length film centered on the road, depicted from the perspectives of a taxi driver and a tax collector. The film received the Golden Dove for best film at the Dok Leipzig festival in 2020 and the special mention of the jury at the Visions du réel festival. This was followed by Colette and Justin, a feature film intertwining his family history and the history of the decolonization of the Congo. The film was part of the international competition at Idfa in 2022. Coconut Head Generation is his third film.