Un Petit Frère
Intimate and moving family chronicle about a single mother who moves to Paris from the Ivory Coast with her two young sons in the late 1980s.
The chronicle is split in three parts, each told from a different perspective. The first part revolves around Rose. She finds shelter with relatives in Paris with her sons (then five-year-old Ernest and ten-year-old Jean) and finds employment in a hotel. She tries to remain as independent as possible and give her sons a strict upbringing. Rose gets a chance at better housing when she starts a relationship with Thierry. When she moves to Rouen with him, the second part of the film begins. This plays about a decade later. Now Jean takes centre stage. He looks after his younger brother Ernest, while Rose still works in Paris during the week. In the third part, the perspective shifts to Ernest. It is again around ten years later and Ernest is trying to build an adult life. Together, the three parts offer a striking picture of how lonely it can be to live and grow up in a foreign country, and the complexity of motherhood in a society in which racism is never far away. (jc)