Lettres au Docteur L

At the end of the 19th century, Swiss missionaries established themselves in Southern Africa. These believers built churches, schools, and hospitals. Among them was Doctor L, a missionary and doctor who founded a clinic. His journal contains tales of adventures in the bush, surgical operations and intensive evangelism. Read through a modern-day lens, it reveals the mechanisms and moral violence of religious imperialism, under the cover of good intentions.
In this film essay, Laurence Favre (Nwa-Mankamana, Prize for the most innovative short film, VdR 2013) gives us access to these texts through a voiceover. Over a century later, she invites inhabitants of these former missionary territories to write letters to the Doctor in response. Some question his intentions, while others thank him for his services. Apparent contradictions that speak to a tortured heritage that permeates the collective consciousness, and of which the landscape still bears traces.
Mourad-Anis Moussa

Lettres au Docteur L, 2025
Zerzura, 2024
Osmose, 2022
In Loving Memory of the Future, 2018
Résistance, 2017
Nwa-Mankamana, 2013