Laura Henno

Koropa

In 2009, Laura Henno began research in the archipelago Comoros for her first film Koropa  the first episode of a triptych— completed in 2016. Mayotte is the only remaining island belonging to France in the archipelago of the Comoros, which gained independence in 1975, creating an invisible border that divides the islands from Europe. Koropa is the portrait of a particular relationship: that of Ben, a former fisherman turned smuggler, and Patron, a child who makes his first smuggling voyage between the island of Anjouan and Mayotte. The film presents a silent rite of passage, this solemn apprenticeship, and the transmission of knowledge that owes as much to the cunning as to the art of sailing over a hostile ocean. By its brief and radical form, its abstract space, the film escapes from the documentary format to draw an ancient drama, where two mute figures, that of the father and the son, share a journey on the verge of death.