The Big Everything
Aminatou Echard / France, Belgium / 2025 / 119 min
The daughter of an anthropologist returns to the African village where she spent her childhood, accompanying her mother during fieldwork. The director captures the locals’ critical perspective, as well as the way they mock and comment on Europeans.
About the film
A filmmaker returns to the African community studied by her anthropologist mother in the 1970s and turns her family’s archives into a critical dialogue between past researchers and the community itself. Those once observed become the observers, reclaiming their own story and reflecting on how they were defined. Structured as a poetic, self-reflexive documentary essay, the film weaves together ethnographic archives, performances created by contemporary Africans, and fragments of correspondence, shaping a montage that gives voice to those who were once interviewed solely for the purposes of academic research.
ProducerCarine Chichkowsky, Beata Saboova, Vincent Metzinger
SoundAminatou Echard, Gil Savoy
CinematographySylvain Dufayard, Aminatou Echard, Amadou Maiga Abdoul-Kader , Aïcha Chaibou Koraou, Halidou Adamou Abdoul-Kader , Abdoulaziz Mounkaila Djibo