Nous, étudiants !

Nestor, Aaron, Benjamin and Rafiki are economics undergraduates at the University of Bangui. Navigating between the overcrowded classrooms, the petty trades that allow students to survive, bribery lurking everywhere, Rafiki show us what students lives are like in the Central African Republic, a shattered society where the youth keep on dreaming for a brighter future for their country.

“They often say that youth is the future. These old people have lied to us, everything is blocked.” Rafiki starts his film facing the camera with his sung voice-over. Throughout the film, protests return sometimes tinged with hope, sometimes blackened by the political corruption in which Central African youth is mired. At Bangui university, Rafiki and his friends Nestor, Aaron et Benjamin are trying their best to pass their economics degree. Here, academic knowledge is not enough: the campus in the capital, like many of the country’s institutions, is corrupt to the core. The foursome has learnt its lessons. They know how to jockey to find a seat in the overcrowded amphitheatres; how to stay away from the female students, coveted by the professors; how to sleep two to a bed in the damp dormitories, or repeat a year without giving up, despite grades that have been doctored, gone missing or withheld pending favours rather than honours. Rafiki films his friends’ daily life and has his film oscillate between a teen movie – its partying and discreet romances under the campus trees – and a caustic tract against a state from which the young no longer expect anything. Studying is tiring, and sequence after sequence, the film observes Nestor’s back as it slumps. Nestor the hard worker, Nester the tough nut, up at night to finish his equations, always ready to help his friends, and a daring opponent of fatality, has a body that is sagging. His bleary eyes finally fill with hopeless exhaustion. Rafiki responds with his film and heals with his group, and heals with the choir.

Clémence Arrivé