How the work of anti-colonialist writer Frantz Fanon is finding a new audience in North Africa
A biopic partly filmed in Tunisia about the anti-racist and anti-colonial activist Frantz Fanon has just been released in France to mark the centenary of the writer's birth. But this anniversary also offers countries in North Africa a chance to rediscover the work of a man who has remained too little known in the region and for too long, despite the fact that he lived in both Tunisia and Algeria. Indeed Fanon, a French psychiatrist born in what was then the French colony of Martinique in the Caribbean, later self-identified as Algerian. Lilia Blaise reports from Tunis on the revival of interest in this major figure in anti-colonial thinking.
AtAt the Carthage Film Festival, one of Africa’s oldest film gatherings, in late December, screenings of Frantz Fanon by Algerian director Abdenour Zahzah played to full houses. For months, Tunisians have been following the war in Gaza closely, and the life of this French anti-racist and anti-colonialist activist and writer resonated with current events.
