Zaho Zay

In ZAHO ZAY, the directing team of Maéva Ranaïvojaona and Georg Tiller weaves together an unusual, haunting hybrid of documentary and fiction, lyric poetry and social reflection. It is a film that resists any easy synopsis, as its narrative aspect is fleeting, periodic, allusive. The voice of a woman (text by Jean-Luc Raharimanana) conjures up both the world she inhabits as the guard at a crowded prison in Madagascar, and the wandering, perhaps mythic father she scarcely knew – a murderer who decides his crimes by rolling dice. Like in João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata’s THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO (2012), staged elements of fiction are allowed to enter the documentary frame – but fragments of this reality equally come to interact with the (largely off-screen) story via the montage. The poetic correspondences set up by this interaction of realms are rich and never schematic: being abandoned by a father who holds power over life and death is intertwined with the politics of a nation where “disaster and ferocity” rule. Especially poignant and piercing is the place of “woman in the night of our country” – sealed in the final glimpse of a women’s prison beside the male enclave. (Adrian Martin)

In the presence of Georg Tiller, Maeva Ranaivojaona and other members of the team. 

Georg Tiller: KM 43.3 DER TRANS- SYLVANISCHE HOLZFALL (2007), VARGTIMMEN – NACH EINER SZENE VON INGMAR BERGMAN (2010, K), PERSONA BEACH (2011), DMD KIU LIDT: DIE MANIFESTATION DES KAPITALISMUS IN UNSEREM LEBEN IST DIE TRAURIGKEIT (2014), WHITE COAL (2015), OVERNIGHT FLIES (2016)

Maéva Ranaïvojaona: DOMICILE (2012, K), PHASME (2016, K)