Sankara’s Orphans

In 1986, 600 orphans and rural children from Burkina-Faso were sent to Cuba with the mission of learning a trade so they could come back and develop their country, which had just undergone a Revolution. But after the assassination in 1987 of burkinabè President Thomas Sankara, the liquidation of the Revolution by Blaise Compaoré and the end of the Cold War, how were they to return, to build lives for themselves, to even exist ? The narrative of this utopia of Red Africa and the epic memories of these children are mixed with the archive images. At times these are reddened by the sand, the heat and the wind, at times they are faded, almost no longer visible, but they help us to visualise the reminiscences of their revolutionary youth.