The African Doctor

A film set in France. Seyolo studied medicine in Congo and finished his degree in France. He hopes to stay in Paris with his family and turns down an offer from his own country. He cannot find work. In the end a small village in the north offers him a post; the village has no doctor and the mayor is out of options. The family moves there. His wife had expected Paris; what she finds is a settlement of a few hundred people, fields and a closed community. The first months are hard. Nobody comes to the surgery. The villagers do not trust a black doctor and say so openly; the children are shut out at school and his wife thinks about leaving. From there the film is about slow acceptance. An emergency, a birth, an accident; each event persuades one more person. What the narrative is interested in is not racism but the village: it does not draw the people as wicked, it shows their habits and their fears. It is based on a true story. Seyolo Zantoko settled in the northern French village of Marly-Gomont in the 1970s; his son Kamini later became a musician and made a song about the village, and it was through that song that the story became known in France. Marc Zinga plays Seyolo and Aïssa Maïga plays his wife. Jonathan Lambert is in the cast. Julien Rambaldi directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes warm French comedy drawn from real lives. Who it is not for: anyone expecting hard criticism; the film shows the racism but its tone is conciliatory and its ending comfortable.