On 14 March 1978, in Le Port on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, 17-year-old Rico Carpaye was killed during a carefully orchestrated far-right attack. Those responsible were never brought to justice. Decades later, filmmaker Laurent Pantaléon investigates the chain of complicity leading back to the crime. He discovers that the identities of those responsible were known all along, but the perpetrators were deliberately shielded from prosecution.
The investigation unfolds as a desktop documentary, directly on the filmmaker’s computer screen. Through typed emails, archival documents, newspaper articles, and witness accounts, Pantaléon searches for the facts. By placing conversations with Communist sympathizers alongside those with supporters of the right, he reveals the deep political divisions on the island.
When crucial government records turn out to be missing, the filmmaker encounters a deliberately maintained silence that has shaped the island’s history. A Minute of Silence uses digital and analog evidence to raise questions about justice, searching a past that continues to reverberate in the impunity of the present.
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