ARLIT, DEUXIEME PARIS
(ARLIT, A SECOND PARIS)
ARLIT is a slow film, quiet, without any hectic and with an affection for small details. We are shown pictures of a dusty, dead town in Nigeria, a foreign world in which only the minority has work since the large uranium mines near the town became unprofitable. Arlit is a disappearing town, in effect a town that has already disappeared. The “beautiful Arlit” that existed in the heyday of the uranium mine, in which everyone was employed and many Europeans lived, which was referred to as the “second Paris” by many Africans, now remains only in memories. Yet the waitress, who have nothing to do as no one visits their bar because they have absolutely nothing to sell which could be sold, know this Arlit only through stories. Despite this they travelled there from Togo and for whatever reason, stayed there.
Arlit is a film about migration within Africa, about mass unemployment and the incredible unscrupulousness with which the radioactive poisoning of the population is put up with and denied. Old Issa, the man to whom this film is dedicated and who returned to Arlit with Mora-Kpai, died of lung cancer two weeks after the end of filming.