The Big Everything

To re-evaluate her mother’s ethnographical archives in post-colonial Niger, filmmaker Aminatou Echard engages with young Nigerian voices, whose reflections on the past, present, and future open new ways of reimagining historical identity.

Through confrontational and transformative artistic gestures, Echard explores the life and work of her mother, Nicole, a white French ethnographer who conducted research in Niger during the era of decolonisation. Drawing on letters, recordings, and archival images, she retraces her mother’s footsteps, sharing these materials with students in Niamey, who interrogate their meanings, blind spots, and power dynamics. Past and present fold into one another as personal memory collides with national history, colonial legacy, and its lingering structures. Moving in spirals, the film resists closure, embracing uncertainty as a vital condition for studying, understanding, and imagining new futures.

– Saulė Savanevičiūtė