Benoit Martin, Hissen Albathaoui

Film

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The Alternative is a documentary portrait of two young men, respectively from Chad and Sudan, Hissen Albathaoui, and Gamal Nasser aka Meno G. Now exiled in Manchester, they have survived the Holocaust of migration to Europe. Cinema and rap are for them a way of living their lives, of expressing their freedom while healing the wounds left by exile and its traumatic journey. They talk about their personal lives, while offering an unfiltered and lucid vision of the war, the conditions in which refugees are received in Europe, the indifference towards their fate, the corruption of the elites and French interference in Africa.

Benoit Martin

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Benoit Martin was born in Paris in 1988. He studied cinema at Rennes 2 University and worked as an editor before enrolling at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains. At the same time, he made a number of films in various genres and formats, experimenting with combinations of personal images – fictional or documentary – and found footage. As a musician, he composes with acoustic and electric instruments that he makes himself, hybridising digital and analogue recording techniques.

Hissen Albathaoui

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Hissen Albathaoui was born in Ati al Batha, Chad, in 1994. He studied engineering in Sudan. A human rights activist, he runs a radio station and makes films against the regime of former President Idriss Déby Itno.

On several occasions he was the victim of state repression and censorship and his equipment was destroyed by the authorities. He left Chad at the end of 2015 and moved to France, co-directing the feature docu- mentary "Journal filmé d'un exilé tchadien monté par un ami français" with Benoit Martin. He was admitted by Great Britain as a political refugee in 2018 and is continuing his activity as a filmmaker.

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