How can cinema serve as an act of healing, and/or reckon with the consequences of violence? This panel explores the ways filmmakers engage with the long-term psychological effects of colonialism, state violence, and personal loss. Rather than focusing on direct representations of violence, films like Kouté vwa, True Chronicle of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, and Twice into Oblivion center on the aftermath—the lingering trauma, the institutional responses (or lack thereof), and the individual and communal processes of healing.
From the genocidal killing of Haitians in the Dominican Republic in 1937 to Frantz Fanon’s psychiatric work in colonial Algeria to a mother’s grief in French Guiana today, these films meditate on violence and trauma within particular (post)colonial contexts. They also raise ethical questions: How do filmmakers depict trauma without re-traumatizing their audiences or their subjects? What does it mean to tell stories of pain while leaving space for catharsis, resistance, or repair? This conversation will examine the role of cinema in confronting historical violence while fostering new possibilities for healing.
