Lara produced a more personal project with French actor Jacques Weber and newcomer Anne Parillaud: Un Amour de sable (en: Sandy Love), released in 1976.

"[1] For the first feature of his series of Guadeloupean films, Lara wrote a storyline set during election time in his home island, calling upon Guadeloupean actors Greg Germain (at the time the new star of Médecins de nuit, a French medical drama television series) and Robert Liensol (an experienced movie actor) to star in the film.

Overcoming ambient scepticism and the many difficulties attached to its production, Coco la Fleur, candidate was released on 14 February 1979,[2] and received acclaim both in continental France and its overseas dependencies.

Several films followed, among them Mamito, the portrayal of a grandmother caught in the social inadequacies of a former French overseas colony that became a full-fledged department of France.

[4] Secondly, Lara himself acknowledges his grandfather's heritage in 1998 when Sucre amer (en: Bittersweet) is released; and again in 2004, when 1802, l'Épopée guadeloupéenne premiered in France on 10 May, the very day of the National Celebration of the Abolition of Slavery.