23/01/2026 - Ivorian director Joël Akafou’s documentary courageously reflects upon the nefarious consequences of the anger bubbling beneath the surface of those who’ve experienced the horrors of war

Far From Anger rounds off the investigation embarked upon by director Joël Akafou into the land of his birth, Côte d’Ivoire, which he initiated with Vivre riche - which scooped the Sesterce d'Or George for Best Medium-Length Film in the 2017 Visions du Réel Festival - and pursued in After the Crossing [+see also:
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film profile], his first documentary feature which was selected in the Berlinale Forum. Far From Anger, presented in Doclisboa and Cinéma du Réel, among other gatherings, was recently selected for Geneva’s Black Movie festival. The film is a kind of cruel fairy tale composed of conversations with people who survived the horrors of the civil war in 2011 which destroyed entire communities. The aim of the film’s protagonist, Maman Jo, who was also a victim of this painful conflict, is to allow the anger bubbling inside of these survivors to come out into the open and to turn into something positive, community-focused and liberatory.

Ziglo, a village located in western Côte d’Ivoire, is trying to survive the suffering caused by a civil war which has left a deep mark on its survivors, who now have to live alongside the ghosts of their loved ones and their executioners. This co-habitation adds fuel to their anger, which nothing has the power to placate. It’s in this context that the film’s protagonist – who also hails from Ziglo - decides to create an association under her name, called “Far From Anger”, with the aim of uniting survivors, victims and perpetrators. It’s an incredibly difficult union, but it’s essential if they hope to achieve the peace the government has failed to bring about.

Herself a victim of the civil war, Maman Jo listens to the stories of those who feel strong enough to speak; she becomes a vessel for their pain, she tries to alleviate their anger, in the hope that tensions between the members of different communities will diminish. Putting herself on the same level as the people she listens to, the protagonist tries to weave together the stories told by each of them, so that their shared pain turns into something positive. In fact, in Maman Jo’s eyes, turning pain and anger into resilience is the only way to escape a situation of ongoing tension, the only way to march towards freedom. What the film looks to explore isn’t so much the immediate postwar period but the long-term consequences of the conflict. Shared by the survivors themselves, these stories of unspeakable violence still resound with devastating force, as if the people telling them were trapped in a never-ending horror-filled present. And it’s from this present that Maman Jo hopes to liberate them in order to offer the possibility of believing in a different future. Drawing on the ancestral tradition of fairy tales, the protagonist tries, in her own particular way, to (re)construct the story of her land, a place where anger gives way to love and to a feeling of freedom which many of them have never actually experienced.

Far From Anger is a profound and necessary film about memory and the consequences of trauma, which can destroy everything for entire generations.

The feature film was produced by Ladybirds Film (France) in co-production with Les Films du Continent (Côte d’Ivoire), L’ Œil Vif Productions (France), Lyon Capitale Films (France) and Pilumpiku Productions (Burkina Faso).

(Translated from Italian)