It's wonderful to see when citizens engage and write books or direct films to help struggling minorities, a lot of genuine sympathy and sincere care diligently goes into their compassionate construction.
Soleil Ô follows the plight of African migrants who move to France in the post-colonial period, but it wasn't made by concerned French citizens, it was created by Africans themselves.
According to the colonialist dogma they had been brought up with, they were equal citizens in France, and were surprised to find a lack and housing and employment after they picked up one day and moved there.
The film experiments with narrative techniques as it explores various aspects of racist tensions, which still pop up with alarming regularity there's still so much work to be critically done.
Back in Africa for instance, the abundance of languages is thoughtfully presented, before the colonized citizens have to fight one another in English and French with crosses turned into swords.
A grouchy bigot cantankerously complains about immigration in a relaxed restaurant, before a black singer inspires the patrons and he suddenly changes his stubborn mind.
A mixed-race individual who looks white has to suddenly walk away, from an angry man who just can't help his instinctual hatred and knee-jerk prejudice.
As a white woman and a black man playfully flirt with one another on the street, passers by look on in shock and offer multiple awkward different takes.
Even though black people possess requisite skills they're still forced to work in specific sectors, many of which demand no education and involve industrial cleaning.
I would argue that Soleil Ô's multiple exploratory scenarios, present pioneering mockumentary techniques decades before they became conventional (they may have also been popular at the time but were referred to by a different term).
The comedy is instructive without being violent and there is one character who keeps showing up, the events loosely tailored around his experience as he tries to make coherent sense of things.
It effectively uses humour and logic to rationally comment on distressing realities, hopefully convincing hard-hearted peeps that there are less drastic solutions to economic problems (people shouldn't be assigned specific jobs solely based on the colour of their skin for instance).
First rate experimental cinema perhaps decades ahead of its time, courageously created by the actual citizens whom the racist attitudes affected, Soleil Ô is worth checking out by concerned multicultural citizens, especially because the same attitudes still persist, and need to be fought by the next generation.
