lifestyle TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2016 Music & Movies Cannes film shines light on Chad’s ‘torture factories’ here is a heart-stopping moment in a new documentary finally be judged later this month at a special tribunal in about the survivors of Chadian dictator Hissene Habre’s neighboring Senegal, where he had fled into exile. One of the Ttorture chambers, when one of the torturers kneels victims featured in the film, Adimatcho Djamai, who was tor- down in front of his victim and begs for forgiveness. “I had to tured so badly he spent more than two decades on the flat of follow orders,” mumbles “Mahamat the Cameroonian”-now a his back in a corrugated iron shack, died the day he was due broken man himself living on the streets as an outcast. “Then to testify at Habre’s trial. Haroun told AFP he wanted to cast a why did you have to beat me so badly?” his victim asks, hand- light on what he calls “this genocide” largely ignored by the ing the former gendarme the rubber pipe he used to flail his outside world “because it was some business of the blacks” prisoner’s leg to a pulp. carried out behind closed doors. “Your superiors told you to stop, but you went on and on,” The director uses Abaifouta as his narrator, visiting his fel- adds the man, who lost the leg. The scene is typical of the low survivors and gently coaxing the horrific stories of their muted but unflinching encounters that fill “Hissein Habre, A torture from them. A hugely cultured man, he was chosen by the guards to bury those who died around him in the packed cells from hunger, thirst and torture. Forgiveness Sometimes he would wake to find another inmate dead beside him and “be glad that it meant a little more space. That is what we were reduced to” he said. “We were beasts.” “I had to pull my life together with a rake” afterwards, he said. Haroun said most of the people who were rounded up by Habre’s DDS henchmen “were innocent. They were arrested for no reason, the random victims of a bloodthirsty regime.” One, Robert Gambier, trying to explain the terrible things done to them, thought Habre might have wanted to appease (From left) Singaporean actor Firdaus Rahman, Singaporean actress Mastura Ahmad, Singaporean director Boo Junfeng the spirits with human “sacrifice so he could hold onto power”. and Malaysian actor Su Wan Hanafi pose during a photocall for the film ‘Apprentice’ at the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Haroun-Chad’s foremost filmmaker whose film “Grigris” Cannes, southern France. — AFP competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2013 — told AFP he This file photo shows Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh wanted to see “if was it possible to still live together after such Haroun posing during a photocall for the film ‘Grigris’ pre- monstrosities. Can survivors still find a place for forgiveness in sented in Competition at the 66th edition of the Cannes their hearts?” Striking Singapore death penalty Film Festival in Cannes. — AFP While “Mahamat the Cameroonian” is forgiven by his vic- tim, another survivor Haroun filmed was convinced his former torturer would one day try to murder him so he wouldn’t have film stirs emotions at Cannes Chadian Tragedy”, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s quietly dignified to see pass him in the street again. Asked by Abaifouta if he film about one of Africa’s least known mass killings, which pre- would kill the man if he had the chance, he said he would. efore he made his new film about the death penalty, ‘Jolly hangman’ mieres at the Cannes film festival yesterday. Some 40,000 peo- While the victims pray that Habre will be punished by the Boo Junfeng sat down to tea with some of Singapore’s More surprising still is the intensity of the almost father-son ple were murdered during Habre’s eight-year reign of terror, a judges in Dakar, they are under no illusions that it will make retired hangmen. He also talked to the priests and relationship that develops between the young prison guard Chadian commission concluded, while the West looked the their pain any more bearable. One man who was once rich B imams who helped condemned prisoners make their last walk and the hangman. “He is in some ways searching for his father,” other way, more worried about the Cold War and Moamer enough to have five wives said he was now a “vegetable”, his to the gallows. And most difficult of all, the young filmmaker Boo said. “And in doing that he finds this man. What I was Kadhafi in neighboring Libya. brain shrunk by the lack of vitamins while in jail. “Only one of spent years trying to reach through the curtain of shame to going for was human truth. I didn’t want to make it an activist Habre was their ally and American and French money even the wives has stayed.” For those who still have their minds, the families who had lost fathers and sons to the hangman’s rope. film.” The death penalty is nevertheless a hot political issue in paid for the country’s political police, the feared DDS, to tor- torture continues in the memories they carry. “I carry the dead But it was only after Boo, whose film premieres at the Singapore and in neighboring Indonesia, particularly when for- ture on an industrial scale, said Clement Abaifouta, who leads around my head like a turban,” one said.—AFP Cannes film festival yesterday, met one particularly “humane” eigners have fallen foul of strict anti-drug smuggling laws. a survivors’ group in the capital N’Djamena. executioner that he had an epiphany. He realized that no The execution of seven foreigners in Bali last year-includ- movie has ever dealt with the whole horrible business from ing two Australians and a mentally ill Brazilian-sparked an Habre verdict the perspective of the man who pulls the lever. “I had already international outcry, and several others, including a British The group has spent 15 years trying to bring the former started to write (the film) but after I met the first hangman I woman and a Frenchman, are still on death row there. Boo rebel leader-who was deposed in 1990 — to trial. Habre will couldn’t write for three months. What completely threw me said he began his research with the book “Once a Jolly was how much I enjoyed his company,” said Boo. Hangman” which features Darshan Singh, Singapore’s chief “He was not like I thought. He was likeable, charismatic, executioner for nearly 50 years who once executed 18 men in grandfatherly jocular and open about what he did. He took one day. Drake beats pride in the almost caring way he looked after the prisoners trying to make it as humane as he could, and I realized how Author jailed difficult that was. “He really shook up my ideas and forced me Its British author Alan Shadrake was arrested the morning Radiohead to to rethink everything.” So Boo took his film-which he toiled after the book’s Singapore launch in 2010 and was held for a over for five years-one step further. For “Apprentice” has a month in Changi prison for insulting the country’s judiciary. shocking twist. It is the story of a young man who ended up He had criticized the way he claimed the death penalty was learning the executioner’s trade from the man who opened disproportionately applied to the poor, while well-connected top US chart the trapdoor on his own father. criminals and wealthy foreigners escaped the noose. Boo shot the prison scenes in disused prisons in Australia to avoid con- rake ruled the US album sales chart for a second troversy in the tiny city state, where an estimated 95 percent straight week Sunday as the rap star who has smashed of the population still support the death penalty. Dstreaming records fended off challenges from Beyonce “It would have been easy to make a film about the death and Radiohead. The Canadian rapper’s “Views,” which came penalty itself, but it’s much bigger than that. I learned so out on April 29, became the first album released in 2016 to sell much about the value of human life” from making the movie. more than one million copies in the United States, tracking Boo, 32, one of a new wave of talented Singapore filmmakers, service Nielsen Music said. “Views” sold 219,000 copies during said his friends who are against the death penalty “may be dis- the week through Thursday, 175,000 in direct sales and the appointed by the film”, which is showing in the Certain Regard rest through the equivalent in streaming. section at Cannes. “I took myself out of the comfort zone to Pop superstar Beyonce’s “Lemonade,” which was released address the issue from a different point of view. I don’t have a on April 23, came second while English experimental rockers view myself (in the film). Because the humanity behind the Radiohead’s “A Moon Shaped Pool” debuted at number three issue is so much more complex,” said Boo, whose semi-autobi- on the Billboard chart. In its first week, “Views” had set a record ographical first feature “Sandcastle” was a hit at the French fes- for the most-ever streams in the seven-day period. Despite tival in 2009. the rapid growth of streaming in the music industry, none of “Apprentice took so long because I had so much to learn, the top three albums appeared on the most popular site, so many things were beyond my experience and very few Spotify.