Éric Barbier

He directed THE SNAKE (2006), THE LAST DIAMOND (2014), NOT ON MY WATCH (The Promise of Dawn, 2017). SMALL COUNTRY: AN AFRICAN CHILDHOOD is his most recent film.

Director’s statement
“I know that there are writers who refuse to be adapted. They want to keep their story neutral in the imagination of readers and in their own. I did not hesitate too long and what made me decide to accept the principle of an adaptation, what motivated me, was to observe that we did not exist in world cinema, in the public's imagination. When I say "we" I mean this part of the world, my home country. Burundi, Rwanda, is an unknown land. Only clichés survive: violence and war. We don't know people, we don't know the intimacy of what they experience and think. It was important to adapt this story for this reason. Cinema is much more powerful and popular than literature to make a world recognized".