In the Footsteps of Frantz Fanon provides an answer to the question: "Who was Frantz Fanon, the author of The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, this pan-African thinker and psychiatrist engaged in the anti-colonialist struggles?"

Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon was not yet 20 years old when he landed, weapons in hand, on the beaches of Provence in August 1944 with thousands of soldiers of the "Free France" mostly from Africa, to liberate the country from Nazi occupation.

He would become a psychiatrist and would engage ten years later alongside the Algerians in their fight for Independence. He died at the age of 36, leaving a major work on the relations of domination between colonized and colonizers, on the springs of racism and the emergence of a thought of a Third World in search of freedom.

60 years after his death on December 6, 1961 in a military hospital in the suburbs of Washington (United States), he will have, in a few books, such as The Wretched of the Earth or Black Skin, White Masks, laid all the foundations of postcolonial studies.

Always starting from his intimate experience, in a writing where the musicality of the text allows to approach complex concepts, he analyzes the process of colonization from its sociological, philosophical and psychiatric angles, and thinks about dealienation from a medical and political point of view.

Based on interviews with his biographer, the psychiatrist Alice Cherki, with his secretary, Marie-Jeanne Manuellan, with the historian of thought Jean Khalfa, with the writers and poets Patrick Chamoiseau and René Depestre, this documentary by Mehdi Lallaoui manages to capture the development of Frantz Fanon's thought, from his medical practice to his commitment to the Algerian resistance and pan-African organizations.

A thought of extraordinary vitality.

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In the Footsteps of Frantz Fanon
A film by Mehdi Lallaoui
France, 104mn, 2021, Color
Voiceover: Bernard Langlois and Jérémy Bernier
Editing, color grading and mixing: Fabien Giacomini
Production: Mémoire Vive Production