The Unknown / L'Inconnu

• Year2019
• Duration12 min

Simplice Ganou, maker of the beautiful Bakoroman (2011) and The Koro of Bakoro, The Survivors of Faso (2017) - both shown in our online programme - is a uniquely empathic and sensitive filmmaker. The Unknown starts almost as a child’s game: can I make friends in Winterthur? It then becomes a psychological thriller, a drama, a search for redemption - and ultimately a poignant portrait of what it is to feel like a stranger in a new place.

Simplice Herman Ganou is one of our 2020 Filmmakers in Focus. His films, though few in number, exist as a shining piece of beauty, empathy, and absolute trust in cinema as a way of connecting with the world. Living and working and Burkina Faso, having studied in Senegal, Ganou’s cinema is made with a unique sense of time and place, as in a stroll through the spaces and the words that bind people together.