“Kouté Vwa”: in Cayenne, a murder and its trauma thirteen years later

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The 2012 assassination of Lucas Diomar, an emblematic figure of the working-class Mont-Lucas neighborhood in Cayenne, remains a profound trauma for his loved ones and neighbors. Directed by Maxime Jean-Baptiste, a cousin of the deceased, "Kouté Vwa" echoes it, interviewing friends and family, capturing here the frescoes erected in Lucas's honor, there the drum concerts, incantations full of pain and rage. Not only does the film skillfully capture the sanctification of the young man, half Shakespearean ghost, half religious icon, through a mesh of powerful stories and images, but it also depicts without pathos the haunting tragedy of the ordinary people of Guyana, confined to this distant land between jungle and sea.