Violences

In a space sprinkled with sand and small, coloured building blocks, Léa Drouet analyses how media depictions of violence shock us and numb us and our desire to act. Alongside philosopher and playwright Camille Louis, this director and actress develops a minimalist language that is devoid of prejudice and a slow gestural style that blends harmoniously with her soft, calm voice. It is her outlook that she uses to decipher the conditions that make violence legitimate, among other aberrations in the world. She narrates the story of her grandmother Mado, who was ten years old an 1942 when she crossed the line that delineated the occupied and liberated zones alone and under the cover of night. She then took a train and spent several years on a farm. Along this tumultuous journey of forced exile, Mawda, a two-year-old Kurdish girl, appears. She was shot dead by the police as her family tried to reach England. The scenes that are narrated are recreated in the sand, where towns, villages and borders are subsequently buried, like the refugee camps that were broken up by the state. Léa Drouet misleadingly conveys this as child’s play, tackling violence in a manner that opposes her traditional illustrations and skilfully encourages us to no longer be stoic and passive.