Madame Desbassayns: Myth and Reality of an Icon of Slavery

The life of Mrs. Desbassayns is exceptional in more than one way in the history of slavery on the island of Réunion. Married at the age of 15 to the forty-year-old Henri-Paulin Panon Desbassayns, this young Creole woman named Hombeline Gonneau immediately embarked on an extraordinary journey. She found herself, in fact, at the head of the most powerful landowning family...

Cast

Jacques Deshayes

as Narrator (voice)

Stéphane Thomas

as Madame Desbassayns

David Erudel

as Henri Paulin Panon Desbassayns

Ophélie Galant

as Young Madame Debassayns

Kristof Langromme

as Slave Neptune

Eric Lauret

as Julien Gonneau Montbrun (father)

Muriel Benard

as Marie-Thérèse L. des Sablons (mother)

Francis Convert

as Abbé Macquet

Mickaël Fontaine

as Cavalier Desbassayns

Fabrice Saubert

as Housing Manager

Reviews

Similar Movies

Gladiator

After the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, his devious son takes power and demotes Maximus, one of Rome's most capable generals who Marcus preferred. Eventually, Maximus is forced to become a gladiator and battle to the death against other men for the amusement of paying audiences.

⭐ 8.2🤍

Manderlay

In 1933, a young woman and her father discover an Alabama plantation whose inhabitants live as if slavery had never been abolished. Feeling a sense of duty to those behind the heavy gates, she stays to liberate the people and see them through their first harvest. With four of her father's colleagues and a lawyer, she faces the daunting task of resurrecting the place known as Manderlay.

⭐ 6.9🤍

Green Flake

Green Flake, a southern slave, joins Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as a child. Later on in his life he is sent to pave the way to what is now the Salt Lake Valley and his faith sustains him.

⭐ 0.0🤍

Dogville

A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.

⭐ 7.8🤍

Planet of the Apes

Astronaut Taylor crash lands on a distant planet ruled by apes who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport. Soon Taylor finds himself among the hunted, his life in the hands of a benevolent chimpanzee scientist.

⭐ 7.6🤍

Heritage Africa

The story of Quincy Bosomfield who is the product of colonial education and has risen to become the district commissioner. In the process, he abandons his African heritage and all that has real meaning to him.

⭐ 5.8🤍

Spartacus

The rebellious Thracian Spartacus, born and raised a slave, is sold to Gladiator trainer Batiatus. After weeks of being trained to kill for the arena, Spartacus turns on his owners and leads the other slaves in rebellion. As the rebels move from town to town, their numbers swell as escaped slaves join their ranks. Under the leadership of Spartacus, they make their way to southern Italy, where they will cross the sea and return to their homes.

⭐ 7.5🤍

Gone with the Wind

The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.

⭐ 7.9🤍

Timuti

In Inukjuak, an Inuit community in the Eastern Arctic, a baby boy has come into the world and they call him Timuti, a name that recurs across generations of his people, evoking other Timutis, alive and dead, who will nourish his spirit and shape his destiny.

⭐ 0.0🤍

Apocalypto

Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.

⭐ 7.6🤍

The Warrior

In 1375, China was in chaos between Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty. Coryo (an ancient kingdom of Korea then) sent a delegation of many diplomats, soldiers and a silent slave to make peace with the new Chinese government. However, this delegation got charged as spies and sent in exile to a remote desert.

⭐ 7.0🤍

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.

⭐ 7.3🤍

Blood Diamond

An ex-mercenary turned smuggler. A Mende fisherman. Amid the explosive civil war overtaking 1999 Sierra Leone, these men join for two desperate missions: recovering a rare pink diamond of immense value and rescuing the fisherman's son, conscripted as a child soldier into the brutal rebel forces ripping a swath of torture and bloodshed countrywide.

⭐ 7.6🤍

Solomon Northup's Odyssey

This is based on a true story. Solomon Northrop is a black man in the mid 19th century before slavery was abolished. He's a born free man who works as a carpenter and is also a part time musician. One day he is approached by some men who want him to play for them. However, that is not their intention; they have kidnapped him and sold him into slavery. Now he has to endure the hardships that he has been spared because of his status as a free man. And his family who don't know what happened to him is searching for him but where do they go? And Solomon also wishes to let them know where he is so that they could get him but unfortunately no one believes his story or is willing to help him.

⭐ 6.2🤍

Indochine

In colonial Vietnam, dashing French naval captain Jean-Baptiste, wealthy plantation owner Éliane Devries, and her adopted Vietnamese daughter Camillevare the three points of a cross-cultural romantic triangle. As the struggle against European imperialism sweeps Indochina, Jean-Baptiste and Camille have to choose sides and Éliane faces the emotionally difficult challenge of raising the child of her daughter and ex-lover.

⭐ 7.0🤍

Rabbit-Proof Fence

In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.

⭐ 7.0🤍

Under The Ashes

The Second World War. French authorities ban political parties and unions. In Algeria, the leaders of political and trade union organizations were arrested and interned in "surveillance" camps with more than 2,000 French and foreigners: communist activists, trade unionists, brigadists, Spanish republicans and other opponents of the Vichy regime. The Djenien Bourezg camp is one of these camps, located in southern Algeria and is one of the most formidable. An old activist for the Algerian national cause returns to the scene. He blows away the ashes that cover this part of history. And through it, we discover the hard fight of the camp inmates for respect and human dignity, under a fascist command.

⭐ 9.0🤍

The Ghost and the Darkness

Sir Robert Beaumont is behind schedule on a railroad in Africa. Enlisting noted engineer John Henry Patterson to right the ship, Beaumont expects results. Everything seems great until the crew discovers the mutilated corpse of the project's foreman, seemingly killed by a lion. After several more attacks, Patterson calls in famed hunter Charles Remington, who has finally met his match in the bloodthirsty lions.

⭐ 6.8🤍

Revolta dos Malês

Salvador, Bahia, January 1835. After more than a decade of hard work, Guilhermina, 27, a slave of Muslim origin, finally gets the resources to buy her manumission, as well as that of Teresa, 11, her teenage daughter. But, contrary to an old promise, his “lord”, farmer Souza Velho, refuses to sell the girl's letter. When Pacific Licutan, Salvador's most esteemed Islamic leadership, is arrested by the Bahian authorities, the Muslim community goes into a boiling state and begins to articulate a jihad. In desperation, Guilhermina sees in the uprising the only way to win her daughter's freedom.

⭐ 10.0🤍

Etched in Bone

Drawing on original footage from National Geographic, Etched in Bone explores the impact of one notorious bone theft by a member of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. Hundred of bones were stolen and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, until it became known to Arnhem elders in the late 1990s. The return of the sacred artefacts was called for, resulting in a tense standoff between indigenous tribespeople and the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian.

⭐ 0.0🤍