In 1972, Alexandre Keresztessy, director for the RTB program “Folklore Wallon”, went to Haccourt, in Belgium, to film a documentary on witchcraft practices. Suddenly, on the screen, a child appears: speaking loudly, he tells, denounces, and laughs. His gestures, his conviction, his facial expressions, everything about him attracts attention. This sequence becomes a cult archive. Nearly 40 years later, captivated by this character, we decide to go looking for him, in the land of macrales. The one who was until now only a ghost image for us, then takes shape. It becomes, little by little, a being made of stories, of words, of these voices which tell it to us. And then, as if inseparable from his being, we encounter Haccourt, this carnival village, head over heels, where everything is reversed: where children speak like adults, adults play like children, where men dress up as women. A village where, on either side of the road that crosses it, two cafes, one red, the other blue, are playing war. A war of folklore with almost no consequences, joyful and noisy. A village where we tell stories. “There are some who tell…” A village, also made of stories and rumors, where fiction jokes with reality and where it is difficult to disentangle the true from the false… A documentary by Florence Bruny and Garance Li, co-directed by Mathilde Billaud, and supported by Gulliver.
