Mr Madila or The Colour of Nothing
2015 · 9m · Royaume-Uni
Directed by Rory Waudby-Tolley
Genres: animation, documentary, experimental
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, darkly comic
Armed with a hidden camera and a business card promising to fix black magic, voodoo love, and immigration problems, an animation student visits the spiritual healer Mr Madila; when the healer refuses to be filmed, the encounter becomes a hand-drawn cartoon of the skeptical investigator and his imposing subject.
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A hidden-camera ambush that refuses to stay documentary—the moment the subject says no, the film pivots into hand-drawn cartoon and somehow becomes more honest about power and belief than any straight investigation ever could. This is the kind of structural twist that makes you reconsider what you thought the film was doing.
Waudby-Tolley situates this work in a lineage of essay films and meta-documentary practice, but the marriage of observational footage and animation feels considered rather than gimmicky—a formal decision rooted in the ethics of the encounter itself.
The decision to animate rather than continue filming when refused consent is so elegant it reframes the entire piece; it's the kind of single choice on a modest budget that transforms a potentially exploitative setup into something that actually *thinks* about its subject.
Reviews
Ce décalage inconciliable des deux personnages inscrit le film dans le genre du Buddy Movie et nourrit tout l'humour de cette rencontre inopinée. La réalité est mieux défendue par la fiction que par elle-même.