Gwetto — Michaël Andrianaly [First Look ’24 Review]

“400,000 FMG isn’t a wage,” one Malagasy car wash customer admits to documentarian Michaël Andrianaly’s camera in regard to the workers at the wash. At least, not a living wage. The exchange rate is approximately 1 FMG to 0.0002995 USD, and that makes 400,000 FMG somewhere around 18 USD. Whether the salary comes daily, weekly, or, god forbid, bi-weekly, we are not privy. Not that it makes all that much of a difference. Even 18 USD a day is only $6,570 a year, assuming one works all 365 days — and that’s no living wage by any stretch, even if one is permitted (or forced out of a lack of other options) to sleep at their place of work. Which is exactly what the four men at the center of Gwetto — Jelco, Justin, Rabetsy, and Mamy — do: they share a dinky one-room shanty, where they also work with three other individuals.

The four workers are ethnic minorities from all over the island of Madagascar. At least two of them hail from Ambositra, a city in the center-south of the country and about a 13-hour drive from their new home in Tamatave, the island’s economic capital.

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