Indivisum: Legacies adrift

INDIVISUM: Legacies Adrift is a 75-minute Canadian feature documentary investigating the toxic legacy of French colonial inheritance laws in my ancestral homeland of Guadeloupe. At its heart is the desire to understand the root causes of family disputes over land that have persisted across generations. In my own family, where relationships are already fractured and tensions remain unresolved because of similar land inheritance issues, my aging mother has been put at risk of retaliation. Given these very real stakes, INDIVISUM: Legacies Adrift deliberately rejects traditional documentary realism. Instead, I use a poetic, masked and theatrical visual language to approach a deeply guarded cultural taboo while protecting the privacy and safety of those who agreed to share their stories.

Blending cinéma vérité, investigative inquiry and striking lyricism, the documentary ultimately morphed into a cinematic essay about what we inherit beyond property: silence, resentment, memory, displacement and a fractured sense of belonging.What begins as a deeply personal quest to better understand Guadeloupe’s colonial legacy through the conflicts in my family ultimately asks a universal question: What do we owe to the generations that came before us, and what are we willing to leave behind?

Film page: INDIVISUM: legacies adrift