We, Students! (2022)
There's a moment watching We, Students! where you genuinely feel the weight of ambition pressing down on three young men who deserve so much better than what the world is handing them. Georges, Moïse, and Ernest are economics students in Bangui, full of grand plans for their country, full of hope that their education will arm them with the tools to build something real. And director Rafiki Fariala is clearly smitten with them. Rightly so. That warmth is infectious, and for a good stretch of this documentary, you're completely in their corner.
What Fariala captures here on a human level is genuinely touching. These aren't polished, media-trained subjects performing ambition for a camera. They're young men wrestling honestly with what it means to want more, for themselves and for the Central African Republic, in circumstances that would make plenty of people give up entirely. There's a quiet resilience to all three of them that gets under your skin. You root for them without reservation.
But here's the thing. The longer you spend inside that lecture hall, the more uncomfortable the film becomes, and not in the way Fariala perhaps intended. What starts as an uplifting portrait of youth and aspiration quietly shifts into something closer to an exposé. The professors, meant to be guiding these students towards the economic literacy that might actually help rebuild a nation, are frequently caught on camera offering not much more than empty buzzwords and vague platitudes. It's maddening. You're watching young people with genuine fire in them sit through lessons that wouldn't stretch a secondary school economics class, let alone equip anyone to tackle the structural challenges facing one of the world's most fragile states.
That frustrating dynamic is the film's most interesting and most uncomfortable quality. It's not cynical about its subjects for a second, but it can't help being damning about the system surrounding them. Whether Fariala intended this as pointed critique or whether it simply emerged from honest observation is hard to say, but either way, the effect is striking. These students are doing everything right, and the institution meant to lift them is barely showing up.
The knock against the film is that this repetitive academic stagnation, while thematically resonant, does cause the middle section to drag. Once you've absorbed the reality of the lecturers' limitations, sitting through another round of it doesn't add much. Ten or fifteen minutes trimmed from the runtime would have sharpened the whole thing considerably without sacrificing any of its emotional impact. It's the kind of pacing issue that doesn't sink a documentary but does stop it from being as urgent as it wants to be.
It reminded me a little of the spirit behind City of Joy, that same feeling of watching people with enormous reserves of determination existing inside systems that are failing them, and finding something quietly extraordinary in the gap between the two. The geography and context are very different, but that emotional texture is similar.
Three stars. We, Students! is a solid, well-made piece of work that earns its warmth honestly. It's an inspiring portrait of the Central African Republic's next generation, and a rather damning look at the university system supposedly guiding them. The drag in the middle keeps it from being essential viewing, but the three young men at its heart make it well worth your time. I hope things are going well for them.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2026-06-12
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Sooner Amazon Channel
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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