LIBERA, DEADLY RAINS | France 5 | Les Routes de l'Impossible

With the very first images, the director plunges us into a living hell. Torrents of water, flooded road junctions and villages, a people drowning in torrential rain, overflowing drains. This is Liberia. Every summer the rainy season is one of the heaviest in the world. Within a few days, a deadly rain aggravates the difficulties of a country ruined by a devastating civil war. An avalanche of water wreaks havoc on every dirt road. Villages are cut off from the world. Despite the state of the roads, Fofana, a pick-up truck driver obsessed with money, decides to take penniless passengers through the jungle to the far side of the country. This journey in the face of the natural elements quickly turns into a nightmare and exposes the terrible conditions that Liberians live under. Showing prodigious ingenuity, everyone tries to get by as best he can. The disaster of the floods is a boon for those who help the victims in exchange for a few pennies. The pastors of a church turn the mass into a money-spinning lottery. In this incredible film the director very quickly exposes the dramatic reality of a country bled white. Thousands of children break rocks from the age of five in order to “rebuild the county”. At the risk of their lives, employees of a multinational palm oil company are transported to the plantations in overloaded cattle wagons. For a miserable salary, beaten by the sun, which has finally re-emerged, they plant thousands of palm trees on their confiscated and devastated land.