«Camille», documentary on the Central African Republic and photojournalism

Cinema Wednesdays - Jonas Follonier

Camille is a young French photojournalist. She has decided to go to the Central African Republic to cover the conflicts there as a photojournalist. The violence not only of the civil war, but also of the solitude of photojournalism, which never allows for real encounters, is going to upset her. Camille is a film based on true events.

Life, the real thing. This is often what seems to motivate those middle-class Europeans who decide to go to Africa or South America, if possible to very poor countries or countries in conflict - or both - to experience something intense, human and useful. With all the questions this line of reasoning raises, it does exist in some people, and should be respected. Camille Lepage is one of them. La repot-French photographer, who died in 2016 in the Central African Republic at the age of twenty-six, is the focus of a film bearing her name, directed by Boris Lojkine.

It was during the civil war in the Central African Republic in 2013-2014 that Camille Lepage began her on-the-spot photojournalism. Witnessing the deadly tensions between Christians and Muslims, she took great risks, but never gave up. A little inexperienced in the practical side - and by that I mean the safety side - of war photography, she made a name for herself. coach as best they can by established journalists and published in Le Monde or Release, that is, pedantic journalists. This whole microcosm of institutional journalism, not the free spirits we admire so much, is very well rendered on screen.

There's an art to the photography, too, though it doesn't leave a lasting impression on the viewer; but honesty obliges, and Lojkine's sober camerawork marries its subject matter appropriately. With almost no music, Camille is humble and dense. It's all in the looks, the sounds and the dialogue. And, above all, in the protagonist's questions. A whole chapter of the film, however, seems to be too much, the one in which we see her doing the night in France in a nightclub and realize that this Western lifestyle is boring. Thank you and hello clichés.

In the midst of the bombs and the human drama of civil war, there is an underlying theme. It's about journalism and the distance that is intrinsic to it. «I'm curious about people, I love meeting new people and traveling».», young photojournalists often say when they're just starting out in the profession, except that it's absolutely impossible to authentically encounter the other person. By this we mean the ability to put oneself fully in their shoes, to enter into their reality. The same applies to tourists: as Clément Guntern put it in our columns, «as soon as we are welcomed into someone's home, the staging is present and the other person's way of life is not the same as the one they present to us».».

And the same is finally true of the cinema. French director Boris Lojkine was right to stage these important events, those of an individual destiny and those of an entire people, several peoples. Not opting for the documentary genre, his film Camille, Although its form is very close to this register, alongside the Central African civil war and photojournalism, it questions the equally fascinating themes of interventionism and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Worth seeing.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Cover image: © Trigon-film