06/12/2024 - Jean-Claude Barny makes the life and legacy of Martiniquan anti-colonial intellectual, psychiatrist and revolutionary Frantz Fanon accessible without losing the essence of his work

Festival-goers might remember that there was already a film this year, by Abdenour Zahzah, about anti-colonial writer, psychiatrist and revolutionary Frantz Fanon that screened at the Berlinale, bearing the lengthy title True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, when Dr Frantz Fanon was Head of the Fifth Ward between 1953 and 1956 [+see also:
film review
film profile]. While focused on the same period in his life, the simply titled new film Fanon [+see also:
interview: Jean-Claude Barny, Alexandr…
film profile] by French director Jean-Claude Barny (who also has origins in Guadeloupe, and Trinidad and Tobago) can instead be seen as a popular take on the brilliant and influential intellectual’s life. The two films could not be more different: with its glossy cinematographic style, Barny's is much more commercially viable than its minimalist, black-and-white arthouse counterpart. With a script by Barny and Philippe Bernard, Fanon has just had its world premiere in the Special Screenings section of the 2024 Marrakech International Film Festival.

Fanon traverses the Martinique-born multi-hyphenate’s approximately three-year stay as head of a ward at Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria and ends some time after his departure. We witness how he transformed the field of institutional psychiatry while writing his now-revered psychoanalytical book on colonisation, The Wretched of the Earth. The film also dramatises Fanon’s support of Algeria’s oncoming revolution through secret meetings while never fully indicating that he was, in reality, part of the National Liberation Front (FLN).

Barny’s Fanon (Alexandre Bouyer) is made out to be a heroic figure: strikingly handsome, he inspires everyone around him. This includes both his patients and his staff: Arabic-speaking Algerian hospital worker Hocine (Mehdi Senoussi), who brings Fanon directly into the fold of the Algerian revolution through local leader Ramdane (Salem Kali); and two young Algerian Jewish medical professionals, doctor Jacques (Arthur Dupont) and student Alice (Salomé Partouche). Fanon is supported by his French-born wife, Josie (Déborah François), who champions his writing and psychiatry work unconditionally. (Barny omits the fact that she was extremely politically active herself and also later notably supported the Palestinian cause.)

Outside of the macro-level struggle between the Algerians and the French spearheaded by an ongoing feud with ruthless Sergeant Rolland (Stanislas Merhar), there is almost too little interpersonal conflict for comfort – neither Josie nor the staff ever seem to have a single complaint about the near-perfect Fanon. Character dynamics in the film are thus oversimplified and emotional outbursts are sometimes overacted, but the majority of the script is so evenly paced that it remains easy viewing. Fanon also takes a turn towards political thriller in the last quarter, which starts to veer into spy-drama territory. Much of the movie’s melodramatic feel is owed to its omnipresent score (music by Thibault Kientz-Agyeman and Ludovic Louis), which, at times, strangely borders on exoticising its surroundings through musical riffs.

Fanon is known for writing with a deeply emotional and evocative style that is sometimes difficult to access, but Barny pares the intellectual’s writing down to digestible excerpts. Placed in tandem with universally understandable instances of injustice, the harsh mistreatment of patients echoes the colonial struggle outside the hospital walls. And so, despite its obvious flaws, it must be well noted that Fanon stands out in how it brings the writer’s work and life to the screen in a way that is highly entertaining and well-positioned for commercial audiences. This is Barny’s truest success: maybe Frantz Fanon will finally have the chance to become a name known not only by scholars, activists, and those interested in Pan-Africanism and decolonial thinking.

Fanon is a production by France’s Special Touch Studios and WebSpider Productions, Canada’s Peripheria Films, and Luxembourg’s Paul Thiltges Distributions. Special Touch Studios also has the rights to its international sales.