Garanti 100% Kréol
(Réunion, 63 min.)
Dir. Laurent Pantaléon
Programme: Nightvision (North American premiere)
Stark black and white photographs conjure a world of greys and shadows in Garanti 100% Kréol. This hypnotic essay film transports audiences to Réunion, a picturesque French island department. Housed in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar, Réunion serves a collision of cultures and faiths. It’s true Creole, as director Laurent Pantaléon demonstrates with this unique exploration of talismans and rituals.
Pantaléon tours the island and asks various witch doctors, healers, and believers about the talismans that ward off bad luck. These diverse objects, which can take the forms of amulets, trinkets, ropes, and cloths, carry what people on the island describe as a “garanti.” These talismans each hold their own insurance policies to ward off bad luck. Sometimes, the garanti might be for good fortune during intercourse. Other times, it might ensure a healthy birth or ward off warts.
Beautiful images capture the culture of Réunion as Pantaléon soaks up the stories and myths that fuel the trade. Garanti 100% Kréole, arguably among the most formally audacious films at this year’s Hot Docs documentary festival, casts a cinematic spell as still images yield to flickers of motion, while select vérité scenes leave a viewer entranced by musical performances, testimonies, and rituals in motion. This is not a film that offers answers. Rather, the more people Pantaléon interviews, the more elusive the quest becomes. Instead, this film invites audiences to question and embrace the unknown, finding fortune in the gamble rather than the guarantee.
Screens with
La Mayordomia
(Canada, 23 min.)
Dir. Martin Edralin
Programme: Shorts (World premiere)
Hot Docs delivers a well-matched pair with this short doc about a unique annual ritual in Mexico City where families vie for a coveted task. Each year, select families find themselves entrusted with caring for figurines of Baby Jesus. Some of these talismans range from diminutive figures, while others match a human baby roughly to scale. Director Martin Edralin observes several families as they rejoice with tears and triumph as they prepare to either receive the little Jesus or hand him off to his new guardians.
Edralin, who previously showed such a sense of specificity in his dramatic feature Islands and its portrait of a Filipino-Canadian family, confidently translates that sense of the personal to the Mexican tale. Shot with a loving and inquisitive eye, La Mayordomia observes a community overwhelmed with emotion. The celebrations are extravagant as various Mexicans share their stories, in some cases revealing that people pursue the guardian role from childhood when considering its competitive nature. Some people wait a lifetime for the honour. Being Jesus’s caregiver, moreover, invites promise of good fortune in this life and, hopefully, the next. But there’s no garanti.
It’s a tough and demanding task, though. One guardian admits that caring for Jesus essentially means putting one’s life on hold for a year. A guardian must always be present and available for neighbours seeking Christ’s blessing. Caregivers also dress the figures and maintain them. Some read them him stories. It’s akin to raising a flesh and blood child: constant attention and care.
The outpouring of emotion that Edralin observes, however, illustrates why this community remains strong of faith while organized religion declines in elsewhere in the world. Regardless of who houses the figure, its significance remains universal as neighbours line-up to touch its dress, offer a prayer, and receive a blessing, all the while munching the snacks and cookies that Jesus’s guardians provide. It’s a curiously joyous affair that Edralin captures with just the right balance of candid humour and respectful inquisitiveness.
Garanti 100% Kréol & La Mayordomia screen at Hot Docs 2025.
Get more coverage from this year’s festival here.
