The Recce - IFFDAY

Competitive section

In 1904 the Zionist Congress sent an expedition to the Ugandan highlands to assess the possibility of a Jewish homeland there. The British colonial government, quietly supportive, described East Africa as 'empty' and 'barren' land, a canvas waiting for the empire to fill it. A Jewish surveyor named Wilbusch began to record the soil, climate and life of Uganda, which the Zionists were already calling the 'new promised land'. To this day we do not know what happened there that made Wilbusch swear never to return to that mountain. Built from footage of a contemporary location scout and email exchanges with a Ugandan fixer, the film examines the shared logic of filmmaking and imperial power, both of which project fictions onto land, and reflects on the tangled relationships between cinema, land and colonial ambition.

Translated from English by IFFDAY, not yet reviewed.