Madagasikara is a documentary about the struggles of three young women and their families in the heartland of a country devastated by poverty.
What do you know about Madagascar? Maybe where it is? A few animated movies? A couple clips of their curious animals? I admit that’s about where I started when I began watching directors Cam Cowan‘s documentary Madagasikara, an often heartbreaking story of strife, famine, and politically-driven devastation that took me by surprise. It’s a small, personal production, but delivered with great impact by a team of filmmakers who fully understand how the story of their subjects should be told.
We open floating above the small coastal village of Fort Dauphin (now Tôlanaro) on the southeastern end of the island, that, from the skies, looks to be a tropical paradise. It is the kind of image of the island we recall in our minds from BBC documentaries and National Geographic magazines. While beauty is abundant, there lies a troubling truth the closer we descend though, where we come upon a neighborhood that is shuttered by poverty. This is a place where most people live on less than two dollars a day. You need only pause for a moment to consider what that may be like.
We soon meet three young women, each with histories, sharing what their lives are like in trying to shield their children from catastrophic misery while holding hope for something better. These women, like so many they represent, are forced into terrible corners where they must do what they can to survive, including breaking rock in mines, spending the days in landfills rummaging for food scraps, and of course, the sale of their bodies.
We learn that Madagascar was for more than a century, like much of the African continent, occupied by European governments, with the island’s independence established in 1960, where former French colonists continued to hold powerful positions in the new leadership. Turmoil continued to rattle the state, with contested political upheaval running rampant until 2002, when millionaire Marc Ravalomanana rejected election results and declared himself president. Using his military might and the support of international powers that saw gains from his authority, he took control. He eventually earned a legitimate second term but plunged the country into economic despair, and was ravaged by corruption and paranoia. Worse, he had leased 50% of the arable land to South Korea for them to grow rice for others. Revolution was coming.
By 2009, violence found soldiers killing protesters and Ravalomanana was forced out of office, leading countries likes the United States to condemn his ousting and pulling aide. Others followed, and in the aftermath, Madagascar fell further into the shadows, now saddled with some of the worst poverty on the planet and a generation of children physically stunted and malnourished.
Cowan, who remains entirely off camera, lets the people of this story unravel the complicated yet deeply moving layers of this lasting humanitarian catastrophe unfold, as we listen to those leading organizations to try and bring change to the people suffering at the lowest levels. The film tracks the history of why and how this has happened while focusing, without deterrence, on those that it impacts most.
As such, we spend a great deal of time with the film’s central representatives, Lin, Tina, and Deborah, who give unfettered access to their ordeal. These are not helpless women, not unintelligent, and not seeking pity. They have carved out what would seem impossible fortitude in a time and place where futility seems borne from every moment.
Cowen isn’t trying to inspire or manipulate. The film is decidedly free of crafted exposition or images designed to spur some exploitive emotion. This is the reality, a stark, unfiltered observation that shows a people who find and define in the darkest times what it means to be human when so much of what most take for granted is stripped away.
Madagasikara is set to release June 26