The word resilience is about to become one of those that, due to being used so often, can lose scope, or consistency of truth. However, whatever the term that designates it, no one can deny that the migrants of the African routes have that capacity to adapt that activates recovery, despite the calamity or succession of calamities suffered. When it comes to mothers who see their children leave or who must leave them in other hands to leave, that capacity exceeds the imaginable. It is resilience in capital letters, as described by some of the 20 stories from 16 African countries, grouped in the documentary film collection Generation Africa. migration stories of Art.TVwhose platform on-line has already made them available to the public in the original version with subtitles.
The films –short, medium and non-fiction feature films– bear the signature of authors from the continent itself, who can speak with their protagonists in their mother tongues and with a close knowledge of those geographies, social mandates and cultural ways of expressing emotions. In all cases, the shootings date from 2021 and 2022, so the testimonial load and current affairs is one of the shared virtues of these films and reports.
One of those essential audiovisuals is fati’s decisionby the Ghanaian filmmaker Fatimah Dadzie, which could well be subtitled “everyone knows what is best for her”, since no one respects this mother’s choice: to return to Ghana because she prefers to raise her children there, instead of living the European adventure without them. Fati, who at first had responded to her husband’s call from Libya, leaving the children with her in-laws, managed to continue with him to Italy, but once the supposed goal of well-being had been reached, the distance between the little ones became unbearable and chose the return, without guarantees and with dignity. To the rejection of her husband and the misunderstanding of her neighbors and relatives, who accuse her of wasting so much sacrifice, Fati opposes will and infinite love, which translates into caring for the children and the desire to get ahead. She alone, but free.
Another mother who chooses to conciliate, with her son in tow, is the young journalist who illuminates the story of Mary Monday Radio, by Ochan Harrington. Mary is a radio reporter and she works, every day, in the Bidi Bidi Sudanese refugee camp, from which she reports, above all, on the shortcomings of other mothers, who lack almost everything essential. She does it with just a mobile phone (with a solar charger), with which she records and edits, to present her program at night, because she knows that there will be no other people as involved with these stories as she is, who speaks the same language as the rest of the displaced.
The mother who is far away is possibly the main reason why you have to maintain your strength, in exile, even amid tears that knot your throat
There are more stories written in feminine that focus on other female survivors; in this case, young people who try to protect that quota of illusion, and who must also go from country to country, crossing borders of the same continent, so as not to lose it. It is precisely in search of relief that the protagonists of the short film travel lend me your voiceby the Rwandan director Claudine Ndimbira, and the central character of the short Still stands!, the sensitive Burkinabe director Aissata Ouarma. In the Rwandan film, Akili – a Congolese refugee in Burundi – finds possible catharsis for her past nightmares in boxing. In Aissata Ouarma’s documentary, the young Malian Mariam confronts the trauma of the violations she has suffered through dance, in a choreography workshop, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. At the same time, in a town in Nigeria, Mercy dreams of meeting her fiancé –who lives in Dubai–, but first they have to unravel the negotiations between the two families, without the intervention of the couple. Between the expectation of love and disappointments travels this other short film called the bride priceand what signature Chioma Onyenwe.
In I return to my mother’s countrythe Kenyan filmmaker Akuol of Mabior evokes the hopes of a politician who, together with her daughters, returns to her country, South Sudan, in a brief parenthesis of stability. and the Nigerian Ike Nnaebue returns to the long walks that cross the continent with his film Lagos-Tangier, one way.
Other works are dedicated to the mother who remains far away (in that place of childhood that has been abandoned), since she is possibly the main reason why you have to maintain your strength, in exile, even among tears that knot your throat. . These feelings guide the filmmaker Rumbi Katedza in money for mom (with South African production) and the Malian artist Seydou Cisse in Taamaden, a documentary that shows the intimate spirituality and street tribulations of three immigrants from different West African countries, in Alicante. Some sit down to contemplate the sea when they don’t know where to go or how to go on and together they reflect on the help of everyday life and those of amulets, understanding that they were born to be adventurers, even when “Europe is not paradise” and “the paradise no longer exists.
In the price to stay, Babucarr Manka recounts the daily life of another group of young people in Gambia: while some prepare for the second crossing to Europe, after a failed attempt and a return, another is lucky with the investment of the money received from the International Organization for Migration ( IOM), as your business prospers. In this case, the value of recording those talks on the way back, full of musings, between people who know the two existences and the two sorrows, on both sides, is also immense.
In short, it is about starting from scratch, every day, with the perseverance of a mother, and this is the common denominator of all the lives of migration.
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