Where do we belong? The country where we were born or the place we are right now? L'Afrance looks at the knotty problem of identity through the eyes of El Hadj, a postgraduate student of Senegalese origin who has been living in Paris for six years.

Initially the film sketches out El Hadj's daily life, as he eats with friends, plays football and listens to taped letters from his family. Scenes from Africa fill the first few frames of the film and it is clear that although his life in Paris is comfortable he still feels an intense bond with the country of his birth. There is a hint, however, of El Hadj protesting too much when he insists that it is his duty (and that of his friends) to return home once he has completed his education. The temptations of remaining in France are apparent, especially in the person of Myriam, a woman El Hadj meets at a wedding. How closely is he prepared to tie himself to the country that colonised Senegal?

DID YOU KNOW?
	Director Alain Gomis is half-French, half-Senegalese and was born in Senegal.   Gomis studied cinematography in Paris at the Sorbonne.

Director Alain Gomis then turns this safe and civilised world on its head, by transforming El Hadj into an illegal alien, simply for having failed to renew his papers on time. El Haj's illegal status eats away at his confidence and precipitates him into actions which would seem totally at odds with the assured young man in the first part of the film. As he struggles to remain in France, or to reconcile himself to returning to Senegal in disgrace, he is forced to think more deeply about how living in France has changed him.

L'Afrance is a subtle film, but the sensuality and intense physicality with which it is shot make it very immediate - as do the excellent performances, in particular from Djolof Mbengue. It is a moving portrait of the alienation of exile, but also, in this era of mass migration, of how an individual struggles to deal with the idea of belonging to two cultures at once.