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Twenty years ago, Thomas Sankara, first president of Burkina Faso, was a victim of the rivalry with his brother in arms Blaise Compaoré. Virtuous, probably excessive in the reforms and sacrifices he asked of his people, Sankara was an obstacle. But despite the excesses of the revolution he heralded, Africa seems not to have forgotten him.

A narrow window on a French-speaking world yet so close, this documentary about the tragic end of President Sankara was broadcast on a TNT channel as a meager media testimony. But in 2007, Burkino Faso witnessed important demonstrations in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of his assassination. The memory of the singular experience of Thomas Sankara’s time in power, at the very moment of the French presidential elections, should have reminded us that there is no such thing as inevitability in matters of power and that it sometimes takes one man to restore hope to a nation. But Sankara’s acerbic manner also disturbed the international political scene. It would seem that we would prefer to put up with another "democratic" reality and a president who single-handedly holds power over the land of honest men for 20 years, allowing his people to vegetate as one of the poorest nations. A president who stands to gain and who enjoys widespread international support. Shortly before members of the Presidential Guard murdered him in 1998, Burkinabe journalist Norbert Zongo declared that the worst was not the acts of bad people but in the silence of good people.

Rémi Rivière

France - 2006 - 52 mn - Colour

Director Didier Mauro, Thuy-Tien Ho

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