THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – MUST SEE
Born in 1997 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rafiki Fariala settled quite early, with his parents, in the Central African Republic (CAR), the family fleeing the war in his country. Composer and slam singer, Rafiki Fariala discovered documentary filmmaking in 2017 during training organized by the Varan workshops, in Bangui, capital of the CAR.
We, students! is his first feature-length documentary, a chronicle of student life in Bangui, selected for the 2022 Berlinale (Panorama section). Few Central African films succeed in making it to major festivals – we often cite The Silence of the Forestby Didier Ouénangaré and Bassek Ba Kobhio, selected for the Directors’ Fortnight in 2003. In 2020, at the heart of Makongoby Elvis Sabin Ngaïbino – awarded at the Cinéma du Réel in Paris –, two aka Pygmies were struggling to continue their studies.
Great exercise in direct cinema
Without having the dramatic force ofState exam (2014), by Dieudo Hamadi, which follows the journey of a group of students taking the equivalent of the French baccalaureate in Kisangani, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, We, students! is a beautiful exercise in direct cinema, poeticized by the musical interludes of the director, who sings in voice-over.
The director himself studied economics at the University of Bangui, attended by rather poor young people – the wealthy classes enrolling in private universities. Through the testimonies, the film shows the dilapidated state of the site, the poor working conditions, the corruption of the teachers. As water seeps into the building, students are left mopping the floors, classrooms are overcrowded, and there is a nagging pressure on students. Girls are subjected to the advances of certain teachers, exposing themselves to sanctions or bad grades if they refuse them, while boys are asked to go flirting elsewhere: “The students are ours. Go pick up your friends from high school”this would be the established formula.
Rafiki Fariala films his loved ones, Aaron, Nestor, Benjamin, with whom he shared his daily life for almost three years, as well as several of their girlfriends. This complicity of a small circle gives the film a spontaneity, even a certain lightness of situation, the spectator finding himself immersed in the middle of a youth who lives, loves and doubts. Sometimes the director succeeds in capturing the atmosphere of the lecture hall on an exam day, but filming permissions have been difficult to obtain: the professors do not wish to give a sinister image of the university and, for their part, some students don’t want to be seen cheating.
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