[English review] Fouyé Zétwal (Plowing The Stars)

Directedy by Wally Fall and narrated by Anyès Noël, “Fouyé Zétwal” is a 12-minute short film. Here’s the plot:

“On her way to meet her dad, a woman reflects on her life. Along the way, the country looks empty to her and, slowly, memories of past lives are coming back to her. Is it real ? Or is it only a dream ?”

— HTTPS://VIMEO.COM/423430218

With a voice over in creole, subtitles in English and a promotional strategy in both languages as well as in French, “Fouyé Zétwal” is the example a new stage of the Caribbean cinema industry : we tell our stories and we make them accessible to the rest of the world without hiding our identity. The story is set in Guadeloupe, but anyone can find something they can relate to. To be quite honest, I feel like nothing that I could say would be fair to reflect the beauty of this film. I don’t like poetry… I just don’t get the emotion behind the words nine times out of ten. However, there are no other word to describe “Fouyé Zétwal” : it’s cinematic poetry.

I found out about “Fouyé Zétwal” when drummer Sonny Troupé promoted it on his social media because he created the original soundtrack. The making-of story makes it even more impressive. Their intention behind the project was clear since the beginning, but the making process happened in a rather spontaneous way. For instance, the poem read as a voice-over all throughout the film was written way after filming occured and they didn’t even agree on it at first. Maybe that’s how magic was created. From the balance between their confidence to keep going on a path they had meticulously determined and their acceptance of following through the unexpected to bring their project to another level.

I was not ready for this artistic journey in the contemporary History of Guadeloupe. The gaze of a woman caught in a moment of vulnerability, the interconnection between her personal history and the recent History of the island, the realization of the destruction of a Nature friendly lifestyle, each image suggests the same questions : what is the life that we are living and what is the life we dream of?… This is exactly the kind of content we need right now.

The ordinary violence in our daily lives doesn’t require to be represented only through violence itself. Our mental health also deserves a direct yet soft approach. And I do mean a soft approach, I’m not saying to sugarcoat the discourse. How could it be different when you look back at Guadeloupe in the past 100 years? Heartbreaks, displacement, protests, revolts… We’ve lived and we keep living in a constant violent environment. The world of the 20th century and of the beginning of the 21st century has been functioning on a constant instability. Each generation must face new life changes, must deal with a new economic paradigm while fighting to keep a connection with the previous generations. Each decade has its time of social unrest, its time of claiming back the right to freedom, to equality and to humanity.

As a Guadeloupean temporal odyssey remembering the past, “Fouyé Zétwal” is also an invitation to dream the future because the only certainty we have is that change is always possible. Sometimes, all it needs is the flap of a butterfly’s wings.

You can stream “Fouyé Zétwal” for free on Vimeo.