Having previously co-directed a documentary on revolutionary thinker and psychologist Frantz Fanon, Algerian film-maker Abdenour Zahzah channels this research into his sober fiction feature debut. Shot on location in black and white, the film charts Fanon’s time as the head doctor of a psychiatric ward in the Algerian city of Blida. After his arrival in 1953, he would soon revolutionise the racist and antiquated practices employed by the institution, which segregated its French Christian patients from their Algerian Muslim counterparts.
Fanon’s achievements during his tenure are recounted in an episodic, vignette-like fashion. From incorporating creative and athletic activities as a part of therapy to implementing more humane treatments for the Indigenous patients, he radically transformed the hospital. His successes, however, were met with disapproval from some of his white French colleagues. Zahzah explores such tensions – as well as Fanon’s relationship with the patients – primarily through conversation; much of the narrative is made of discussion or consultation scenes, filmed largely in shot-reverse shot style. Even with Alexandre Desane’s grounding presence in the lead role, the ubiquitousness of these compositions results in stylistic monotony – a stark contrast to Fanon’s famously incendiary writing.
But what emerges from these sequences is the strong link between imperialist violence, psychological trauma and mental illness. Far more than any other illness, imperialism is the disease that infects the souls of those living in occupied territories. An understanding of this relationship is the driving force behind Fanon’s psychiatry practice and political activity, the latter of which is touched on but not dealt with in depth here.
Though not quite as exhaustive as its lengthy title would suggest, this film remains a compelling study of a rarely portrayed figure, and of the dehumanisation inflicted by French colonial psychiatry.
• 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 is at the ICA, London, from 8 to 14 November.
