The Sea Wall, Marguerite Duras and the Colonial Illusion

By Valérie Urréa & Nathalie Masduraud

Judged too Marxist, subversive, unpatriotic, The Sea Wall by Marguerite Duras published in 1950 did not receive the prestigious French Literature Goncourt Prize that year. 70 years later, this masterpiece of literature, which was one of the first to denounce the horrors of colonization, continues to resonate in the current postcolonial debate. Through the representation of the bodies depicting by Duras in her novel, using archives and current footage, interviews with anthropologists and Duras’ specialists, the film reveals in a sensitive and unprecedented way, an Empire where race and gender predetermine the future of everyone.