The directorial debut of Desiré Ecaré, who, together with Georges Keita, Timité Bassori and Henri Duparc was one of the trailblazers for the emergence of an Ivorian cinema. Concerto pour un exil is the first in the “castigare ridendo mores” series, a sort of humanistic comedy in which the director wanted to depict ironically the social and psychological alienation of African youth in France at the end of the Sixties. The same intent would reappear in his subsequent À nous deux, France (1970) and Visages de femmes (1985), which would earn the recognition of French critics. Born in a suburb of Abidjan, he arrived in Paris in 1961 thanks to a study grant. His formative experience was with Jean Marie Serreau’s troupe Le Toucan, with whom he would stage such plays as Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo and Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule. During the same period, he graduated from IDHEC along with Henri Duparc, who would also play a role in Concerto pour un exil. Ecaré shot the film making use of notes in a notebook and improvising with the non-professional cast and crew. “I did not want to make an ethnographic film about exile. I wanted to speak about my generation. A generation which every day resists cultural assimilation and knows that it has no future in its own country. A disenchanted generation, but also a deeply cultured and courageous one.”

Cecilia Cenciarelli