Producer
This period of limbo is plagued with tiresome, demoralising indignities that arise from casual racism raining down from various figures of authority. For much of the film the camera gazes lengthily, languorously, peacefully at landscapes, skyscapes and topographies; snow-covered mountainsides, cow-dotted pastures, cascades and pastoral lanes are all captured in striking black and white. Yet this is no holiday brochure, for the stark beauty of the images is pierced by unsettling questions that have perhaps drained them of colour: What does it mean to exist in a place where one is neither welcome nor unwelcome? How is it that such a decision rests on arbitrary boundaries, arbitrary histories, and policies that value paperwork over dignity?
Writer
Down on the banks of the Maroni River, little Derreck dreams of heroic warriors. He’s a member of the Wayana tribe in French Guyana. In this film, Derreck is not our only portal into another world. His sister Sylvana also dreams – of an impossible love, who belongs to a different tribe. Their grandmother Malilou takes us back to her youth in the 1950s. It seems that everyone wanders off now and again into a parallel, at times almost ghostly world. Whereas the youngest members of the tribe can still lose themselves in boundless flights of fantasy, the older generation contemplates more existential questions. How do dreams of the future relate to identity? What makes you a real Wayana?
Director
Down on the banks of the Maroni River, little Derreck dreams of heroic warriors. He’s a member of the Wayana tribe in French Guyana. In this film, Derreck is not our only portal into another world. His sister Sylvana also dreams – of an impossible love, who belongs to a different tribe. Their grandmother Malilou takes us back to her youth in the 1950s. It seems that everyone wanders off now and again into a parallel, at times almost ghostly world. Whereas the youngest members of the tribe can still lose themselves in boundless flights of fantasy, the older generation contemplates more existential questions. How do dreams of the future relate to identity? What makes you a real Wayana?
