Review: The Night of Truth (La Nuit de la Vérité)

This review is part of a series, with fortnightly instalments, reviewing African political films or political films on African subjects.

The Night of Truth (2004) is an astonishingly powerful film, though not always an easy one to watch. Set in an unnamed West African country, it deals with the difficult process of reconciliation after a decade-long civil war. The two sides are the Nayak and the Bonandé. The leader of the Bonandé, Colonel Theo, has invited his opposing number, always referred to as The President, to a ceremony at his compound to officially end the conflict. The film focuses on this night of celebration as both groups try to come to terms with the atrocities committed, and it is obvious to all that there is still a huge amount of mistrust between them. This tension builds throughout the evening as it slowly becomes clear that something terrible is going to happen.

The chief themes of the film are blame, responsibility and reconciliation. How do you go about coming to terms with forgiving the unforgivable? While we have seen several films about civil wars in recent years, it is much more unusual to see one that deals explicitly with the aftermath and the difficult road to peace. Many of the characters are haunted by things they have done, and those they have lost. The President’s wife Edna has lost her young son in the conflict and revenge is uppermost in her mind; as she comments early on in the film, “As long as their blood is not avenged, the dead remain on Earth”. Soldiers on both sides echo this by repeatedly asking if the end of fighting means that their comrades died in vain.

Original directions

While Burkina Faso has produced several excellent political films in the last few decades, it is depressingly rare to find any directed by women. With her first full-length feature, Fanta Régina Nacro makes a memorable debut, refreshingly deciding to tell this story from a feminist perspective. The female characters repeatedly refer to war as a game played by men while the male characters either ignore their concerns or belittle them. Of particular note are the wives of the two leaders; both are tortured by past events but are willing to wear fake smiles in public for the sake of their husbands and the peace process, a succinct reminder that politics is often about facades and perception.

Lacking a significant budget, Nacro’s main skill as a director is to draw you in through dialogue, characterisation and background detail. For instance it does not bode well that on the day of the meeting, the village women are outside the compound walls painting brightly coloured murals of the atrocities. Meanwhile their children sit around gleefully discussing how they lost various limbs during the conflict. In many ways, the film is deliberately theatrical, illustrated by the small cast, single-setting, and the way in which the characters often give long monologues or talk to themselves.

Colonel Theo’s banquet speech where he compares the war to a destructive hurricane is a particular standout moment. It could also be argued that this sense of theatre disguises the occasional lapses from the supporting cast, and also helps justify the ending which is as strange and horrific as anything found in Shakespeare or the Greek tragedies. Nacro also does wonders in terms of eliciting strong performances from a group of mostly amateur actors, many of them actually members of Burkina Faso’s military forces. It is a huge shame that she hasn’t made a film since as we need more original voices like hers in cinema.

I think the main strength of the film is that it isn’t about any particular conflict or place, which helps to make its themes universal. The obvious parallel that springs to mind is Rwanda, but similar events have taken place in Yugoslavia and over a dozen other countries round the world. The Night of Truth is a hugely political movie and brave enough to admit that reconciliation is a long and difficult process that takes years and decades rather than days and weeks. As many conflicts in Africa and elsewhere are still on-going as I write this, the film’s message will sadly remain relevant for a long time to come.

Dr Matthew Ashton lectures in politics and the transnational media at Nottingham Trent University.

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