Video 4/3, colour, sound 5.1, 61'

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“Sous les feuilles” (“Under the Leaves”) looks at a particular place: Anse Bellay, a cemetery of enslaved people that resurfaced after Hurricane Dean in 2007. Though set apart from the plantations, the site bears their trace in the bodies buried beneath its soil. After archaeological excavations, a collective of local residents came together to demand that the remains be returned to the burial site. Since then, the place has drawn a kind of gathering—through the groups who visit it, what they project onto it, and the possibilities of care it opens up. Characters from the previous film reappear here, summoned into other spaces of intimacy and connection to what lies beneath the ground.

In the psychiatric hospital, the idea emerges of linking this stretch of land by the sea to an unprecedented healing approach. The site crystallizes multiple forms of attention, which the film brings into coexistence. The voices of the living intertwine with the care of bodies and minds inhabited by the dead and by the colonial imprint. It is about a place in relation to its invisibles, to its scattered fragments—the story of the plants, what they have witnessed, and what has been left unsaid.

Director: Florence Lazar
Writers: Florence Lazar, Jean Breschand
Editing: Rodolphe Molla
Cinematography: Lucile Mercier, Eva Sehet
Sound: Terence Meunier
Sound Editing and Mixing: Thomas Fourel
Color Grading: Alexandra Pocquet
Production: Sister Productions
Colour: Alexandra Pocquet
Production: Sister productions