From otherness to integration, the short film “Dans la place” questions racism in Carouge

Published on June 28, 2024 at 10:12. / Modified on June 28, 2024 at 11:21.

Carouge, Place du Marché. First bursts of spring, and drinks on the terrace. It is in this scene with its imperturbable idyllic appearance that Homayun, Kismath, Doran, Nayan, and Mohammad challenge passers-by with cameras in hand. “What does racism mean to you?” The answers follow one another and are not alike. Sometimes it is considered to be “the fear of the other, the one we reject on principle”, sometimes a problem that we imagined “abolished”. And when the question of the positive effects of immigration within the city of Carouge is raised, the Carougeois walkers struggle to respond. The scene then takes on an ironic air, in a city that is nicknamed the Sardinian city, and whose foundations were built with the help of transalpine workers.

Bringing exile and home into dialogue. Questioning “the gift of birth”, integration in the light of migration and its difficult journeys. This is the approach at the heart of the short film In the place. Broadcast Thursday evening at the Carouge neighborhood center in Geneva, the documentary, the result of a collaboration between three young people from the city and two unaccompanied Afghan minors, led by director Rachel M’Bon, a film crew, and trained by director Juliana Fanjul –, questions racism and the way we look at others. In their first film I am black, the two women offered an unprecedented space to speak to several black women from the four corners of Switzerland. With In the placethey meet their gaze again.

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