In the middle of COP 26 in Glasgow, will be released at the cinema on Wednesday 10 November “Walking on the water”, a documentary on the most dramatic consequences of climate change in one of the poorest countries in the world. Drought, lack of water, broken up families, a nomadic people forced to settle and forced, at the same time, to migrate. The director and co-author of the documentary Aïssa Maïga set down her camera in Niger, in a village far from urban centers in Tati, in the north of the country, in the Azawad region, a 15 hour drive from the capital, Niamey.
Here, the Peuls, the nomadic people, who move between Niger and Mali, settle on a territory depending on the presence or not of water. This water is so precious in these regions hard hit by global warming. It is still necessary to go to seek it from kilometers from the camps, to extract it from then which dry up quickly according to the 9 to 11 months of dry season. And it is women who occupy this vital function for their community. The film takes place over a whole year. We follow the school which tries in spite of everything to function with a totally heroic teacher and characters who stand out, like Oulaï, 14 years old, gaze that catches the camera. She takes care of her two little brothers alone when her parents leave the father to feed the flock, the mother to go look for work in another African country. And we wait with her that finally a borehole promised by the country’s authorities is installed..
“When I was asked to make this film, I immediately ruled out the possibility of making an expert film or a demonstrative educational film with a voice over, figures etc.”, explains Aïssa Maïga. “I especially wanted us to be at the level of human beings, to be in a meeting with the people who inhabit this place, she continues. And I really used the tools of narrative fiction to create this documentary, to create empathy. Make the spectator and the spectator spend a moment with these people, cry with them, but also laugh with them. I also wanted to create a very strong impulse of life which corresponds to the reality on the spot “, details the director.
“Walking on water” also shows a landscape transformed in a few decades by global warming, “because of the footprint of industrialized countries on the climate”. “Today, this region which was still relatively green 20 or 25 years ago has become hyper arid”, recount Aïssa Maïga.
For the director, making beautiful images was essential. “I come from West Africa. I was born of a Senegalese mother. I was born in Senegal and of a Malian father who insisted on taking me very early to Mali, in the north of Mali, in the Gao region. ” “When I was a child, remembers Aïssa Maïga, when I was 5 or 6 years old, then a teenager, then an adult, every time I got off the plane, took a car or a bus and crossed Mali, or when I arrived from Niamey , from the south of Niger, that we crossed, that we went west to go to Gao, which took my heart, what captured me in terms of emotions before finding my family, it was the landscapes . ” “I wanted to restore the beauty of the Sahel. This aesthetic look is very important to me because we film destitution and people confirm that they are so worthy that they deserve this aesthetic strength.”