Washington, Bruxelles-Kinshasa
Fabian Hannaert
2002 - 46 min - Digital vidéo - Couleur - Belgique

When I met Washington for the first time, he had been living illegally in Brussels for the past eight years and hadn't seen his wife, Mado. One day, he got his immigration papers and the (theoretical) right to bring her over. When I left for Kinshasa, in the Congo, to shoot this long-planned film and speed up the process of reuniting the family, Washington and Mado had been separated 12 years.
The film is divided into three parts: a letter from Washington to his wife, or his life as a Black in the land of the Whites; a letter from Mado to Washington, or her life as a woman without a man. The third part would have shown their reunion, a simple sequence shot at Brussels airport: Mado arriving, Washington welcoming her. But it didn't turn out that way.