1970s. Bokolo and Mamadou, street sweepers in the city of Paris, mobilise to take part in a television quiz on haute French cuisine in order to finance the return home of a sick colleague. Adapted from a short story by Daniel Boulanger, Un dessert pour Constance is Sarah Maldoror’s first work of fiction for public television, as well as her first foray into comedy. It brings together Ivorian actor Sidiki Bakaba, Guinean actor Cheik Doukouré, and French actor Jean Bouise in a series of situations that are at once comic (the street-sweeping lesson), ironic (the quiz show), and deeply moving, as it questions the humanity and dignity of Black men: “The essential thing is never to come to work in solitude and in contempt.” From the very first images, Maldoror dwells on the workers’ everyday lives – as she already did in Sambizanga, on the construction site along the flooded river. Here, the camera follows the garbage truck circling the Lion of Place Denfert-Rochereau, then moves to the crane lifting debris at the sorting centre. Men, machines, and materials seem to merge into a single choreography. Tiny in the face of these enormous shredders, the men endure, both in Luanda and in Paris. In her statement of intent, Maldoror echoes the words of Aimé Césaire:“In the daily life of the streets of Paris / immigrants, rubbish collectors, street sweepers / What do they do? What do they see? Who are they? / These men of solitude cry out like Césaire: ‘long live joy, long live Love, long live those who have never invented anything’”.

Anouchka De Andrade