Mahaleo

Mahaleo is the most beloved music group in Madagascar — seven musicians who have played together since 1972, when their songs became the soundtrack to the popular uprising that ended the neo-colonial regime. In the decades since, each member kept their day job: surgeon, parliamentary deputy, farmer, sociologist. Rajaonarivelo and César Paes follow the band across Madagascar without commentary or narration, letting the music serve as a lens through which to observe the country at a critical juncture in its history. The film is both a portrait of an extraordinary group and a meditation on what it means to imagine a national culture across thirty years of change.