Vezo, Those Who Deal with the Sea
The documentary Vezo, directed by filmmaker Manu Cid, was filmed in June 2019. It was conceived with the aim of bringing viewers closer to the reality of the Vezo people and raising awareness of their way of life, traditions, and the challenges they face in their daily lives.
The film’s protagonist is Sollicité, a fisherman who has been fishing on the coral reef of Mangily, in southwestern Madagascar, for more than thirty years. In recent years, fish stocks have declined due to the severe environmental impact affecting the region, making it increasingly difficult to support his family. Despite these challenges, Sollicité continues to persevere and to support the most vulnerable people in his village, where there are numerous cases of child malnutrition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B95UjbEUYU
About Vezo
by Sara Olleros Rodríguez
On Saturday, October 23, 2021, at 7:30 p.m., the short film Vezo was screened alongside other selected shorts curated by the Another Way Film Festival (@anotherwayff), in Madrid’s Cineteca.
The protagonist, a fisherman named Sollicité, shares his way of life while reflecting on the challenges facing Madagascar.
Sollicité is one of the people who work on the El Hilo y el Baobab project. I met him in the summer of 2018 thanks to his son Germain, a shy boy who must have been curious about the foreign woman walking through the streets of his village. One day, he invited me into his home to meet his parents. That was the beginning of our friendship. On one occasion, they invited me to dinner and served fresh fish that Sollicité had brought back from the sea that very morning 🐟.
We spoke in the French of goodwill—the kind you can manage with the four words I knew and the eight words they knew. And in the calm, peaceful silence that night brings to places where life revolves around the sun, under a canopy of bright stars, lit by the glow of an old battery-powered torch and a candle (electricity in Mangily is a privilege), the hours passed as we talked.
I was fascinated by the sea stories Sollicité told—or the stories I believed I understood—and I thought: Manu (@manusanchezcid) has to come and document this. As it happens, Manu—Manu Sánchez Cid—is not only, in my view, a very talented documentary filmmaker, but also my cousin 😍. So it was easy to count on him, and in 2019 we were able to travel together to Madagascar with two cameras and a stabilizer. We spent five intense and wonderful days in Mangily.
The result of all that work, filmed and edited by Manu, is Vezo, which in Spanish means “Aquellos que lidian con el mar” (Those Who Deal with the Sea).
About Vezo
by Sara Olleros Rodríguez
On Saturday, October 23, 2021, at 7:30 p.m., the short film Vezo was screened alongside other selected shorts curated by the Another Way Film Festival (@anotherwayff), in Madrid’s Cineteca.
The protagonist, a fisherman named Sollicité, shares his way of life while reflecting on the challenges facing Madagascar.
Sollicité is one of the people who work on the El Hilo y el Baobab project. I met him in the summer of 2018 thanks to his son Germain, a shy boy who must have been curious about the foreign woman walking through the streets of his village. One day, he invited me into his home to meet his parents. That was the beginning of our friendship. On one occasion, they invited me to dinner and served fresh fish that Sollicité had brought back from the sea that very morning 🐟.
We spoke in the French of goodwill—the kind you can manage with the four words I knew and the eight words they knew. And in the calm, peaceful silence that night brings to places where life revolves around the sun, under a canopy of bright stars, lit by the glow of an old battery-powered torch and a candle (electricity in Mangily is a privilege), the hours passed as we talked.
I was fascinated by the sea stories Sollicité told—or the stories I believed I understood—and I thought: Manu (@manusanchezcid) has to come and document this. As it happens, Manu—Manu Sánchez Cid—is not only, in my view, a very talented documentary filmmaker, but also my cousin 😍. So it was easy to count on him, and in 2019 we were able to travel together to Madagascar with two cameras and a stabilizer. We spent five intense and wonderful days in Mangily.
The result of all that work, filmed and edited by Manu, is Vezo, which in Spanish means “Aquellos que lidian con el mar” (Those Who Deal with the Sea).
