Lili et le baobab (2006)

Aged 33, Lili goes to Africa for the first time in her life, to Agnam, a Sahelian village in the northeast of Senegal. Her local council has asked her to photograph the infrastructure they financed as part of the twinning of the two towns. Although the immediate affection and curiosity that she arouses intrigue her, Lili does not really stop to take stock. The photos she has to take protect her when she feels alone and foreign, faced with the questions she is asked about her life and the children she doesn't have... In a sense, it is almost without her knowledge that Aminata, a woman her age, lays the foundations of an improbable friendship. However, when Lili returns to Normandy, something has shifted, or cracked... and she is projected differently into the life that used to be hers. She meets Moussa, an immigrant worker from Agnam. It is through him that she learns that Aminata has given birth to an illegitimate child and that she is in danger in her community. In her own awkward and impulsive way, Lili will have to implicate herself and deal with the unsettling sensation that Africa has left her; the new desire to feel useful and therefore alive. Full of illusions, she goes back to Agnam. Without the protection of a job to do, this trip will be less superficial and more implicating. It will directly confront her with the question of where she belongs.