Does knowing where we come from tell us who we are ? This somewhat philosophical question is a token of the diversity of the angles taken by Ecocinema 4th International Environmental Film Festival in Rhodes (Greece) to address the complex relationships between man and his environment.
This is also the subject of Motherland : a genetic journey, by Archie Baron from the UK, a 89-minute long documentary that spurred a series of questions among the audience on the second day of the festival.

The director, who was present at the festival, has set up an original experiment where he uses the DNA of 3 African Caribbean persons to trace them back to the African region or population their families originated.

However, the documentary is neither a film about science or history but rather about the quest for identity.
Its narrative style is quite innovative for a documentary, which helps to attract a wide audience (it was commissioned for a prime time slot on mainstream British channel BBC2, which usually targets at least 2 million viewers). Its use of science and history in a CSI-like investigation with graphic effects common to some successful TV programmes, such as split screens for instance, helps it to crossover different audiences. Moreover, the narrative style seems to be inspired by the way popular reality TV shows are structured. The opening sequence defines the experience, the stakes, and portrays the 3 participants with a voice over and a quote by each of them, all in a quickly paced editing. Then, when the film really begins, the pace gets slower to detail the experience, and to explain how the casting was done : the 3 were chosen among 229 volunteers out of a population of 1 million African Caribbean in Britain. The prerequisite was that 4 of their grandparents were of African Caribbean origin so that the DNA tests could be valid to trace them back to the places where they came from. The results of the DNA tests are then revealed to the participants and to the viewers in a very graphic way, as we locate the region they initially came from on a computer screen. At this climactic moment, a reaction shot on the face of the participant makes us share its sense of shock when the truth sometimes challenges his strongest beliefs. The adventure will then begin for each of them, since they will fly to the place they came from to face their unknown ancestors.

But of course, the comparison with reality shows stops here. First, the participants are not totally manipulated by the “experimenting director” since they all seem to be very clever and aware of the situation. Secondly, the film contains its own critic in the voice of a scientist who explains in different sequences that DNA doesn’t determine anything, when reality TV shows are never critical of their own processes. And last but not least, the photography is nothing less than excellent, with every shot perfectly chosen, framed and lit.

However, the film can draw criticism, since the experiment it commissions opens a Pandora box it doesn’t question : tracing the origins of people with their DNA can have dire consequences as it segregates people into groups, even if the message seems to be that we are all intermingled (we could always discuss the degrees of this integration yet).
The movie was yet so successful and innovative that a follow up is currently in production to explore how the personalities of the participants have changed a year later.

Olivier Delesse