The record number of African films at the 76th Cannes Film Festival has fueled the debate about the renaissance of cinema on the continent, fueled by a new generation of female directors. This year’s Carrosse d’Or award, which is part of the Directors’ Fortnight, went to Malian Souleymane Cissé, a veteran director credited with reinventing cinema as an African art.
After celebrating the last gasp of Europe’s decrepit aristocracies with “Jeanne du Barry,” the controversial film starring Johnny Depp that opens the curtain, the world’s most lavish movie rendezvous got down to business on Wednesday with a barrage of big movies. and small, new and old, from all corners of the planet.
In the race for the Palme d’Or, the Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda, winner of the prestigious trophy in 2018, presented “Monster”, the story of a young man whose strange behavior causes concern, while the French Catherine Corsini arrived on the red carpet for his family drama “The Return,” which has been the subject of controversy following allegations of harassment during filming.
In the bowels of the gigantic Palais des Festivals in Cannes, dealers were already announcing an exceptional edition of the important Cannes Film Market, the main indicator of the state of health of the industry, with a record number of 13,500 delegates already registered and the return en masse of Asian companies after a prolonged hiatus induced by Covid-19.
Along the palm-lined Croisette, Portuguese, Malaysian, British and Cape Verdean films were shown, including Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City.” An exploration of the Nazi takeover of Amsterdam during World War II is the longest film in this year’s edition, running at over four hours.
Meanwhile, festival-goers were treated to an air of nostalgia for French band ‘Nouvelle Vaguea, with a special 60th-anniversary screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s classic “Le Mépris” (1963), a devastatingly beautiful portrait of a corrupt film industry whose soundtrack has forever marked the history of the seventh art.
A new generation of African filmmakers
In this year’s edition, Cannes breaks its record for female directors nominated for the Palme d’Or, with seven women among the 21 participating filmmakers. There are also two African candidates in the competition for La Palma, who are part of a large and young contingent from the continent that has nurtured the idea that African cinema is finally enjoying its “Cannes moment”.
Tunisian Kaouther Ben Hania will debut on the red carpet for the first time on Friday “Four Daughters,” a feature film and documentary about a mother’s efforts to find her daughters drawn to jihad in Syria. The following day, Senegalese debutante Ramata-Toulaye Sy will present the tortured love story “Banel & Adama,” the only debut feature this year in her Palme d’Or race.
The selection by Ben Hania and Sy points to an excellent edition for African cinema, four years after French-Algerian director Mati Diop won the Cannes Grand Prix by surprise for her debut film “Atlantique”. It also suggests a form of belated recognition for a continent that has only won a Palme d’Or, in 1975, for Algerian Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s “Chronique des Années de Braise” (Chronicle of the Years of Fire).
The Cannes Un Certain Regard section, dedicated to new talents, will screen another four African films. Moroccan filmmakers Asmae El Moudir (“The Mother of All Lies”) and Kamal Lazraq (“Hounds”) look at the daily life and underworld of Casablanca, while Congolese hip-hop artist Baloji recounts the story of a witch boy in his first film, “Omen”. Among the most anticipated films is “Goodbye Julia” by Mohamed Kordofani, which explores the roots of the chaos plaguing Sudan.
Also screening at midnight is “Omar la Fraise” (The King of Algiers), by French-Algerian director Elias Belkeddar, set in Algeria and starring Reda Kateb as an exiled gangster trying to get back on track.
African cinema is also present in the parallel selections, the Directors’ Fortnight, the Critics’ Week and Acid, with films from Cameroon (“Mambar Pierrette”), Tunisia (“Machtat”), Guinea Bissau (“Nome”) and Egypt (“Paradis”), the latter two helping to broaden the spectrum beyond French-speaking countries.
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The abundance and diversity of the film offer is a source of “pride and confidence” for Aïssatou Diallo Sagna, a French actress of Guinean origin who acts as “godmother” of the African Pavilion at the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
“I think many people are still unaware of African cinema and its diversity,” declared the actress, who is part of the cast of Catherine Corsini’s film, at a cocktail party organized to mark the opening of the pavilion. “They will be able to discover new forms of cinema, new facets of cinema.”
A tribute to Souleymane Cisse
In addition to this avalanche of new films, this year’s Directors’ Fortnight reserved a special place for a legend of African cinema, Souleymane Cissé, who on Wednesday received the ‘Carrosse d’Or’, a prestigious award that honors directors who they have made history.
Rarely has a film opened up greater perspectives than 1987’s “Yeelen” (The Light), the spellbinding masterpiece that instantly made Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé one of the darlings of auteur cinema in the West.
A deeply spiritual work rooted in the oral traditions of pre-colonial Africa, ‘Yeelen’ was hailed as an emancipatory breakthrough for cinema on the continent, a reinvention of cinema as an African art form. It won the Jury Prize at Cannes, a first for the continent.
For all its mystical symbolism, Cissé’s masterpiece remained firmly grounded in reality, with a potent political message reminiscent of his earlier social realist works, including his 1975 debut feature “Den Muso” (The Young Woman). , a film indebted to his training in the Soviet Union during the 1960s.
This moving story of a young mute from Bamako, the capital of Mali, rejected by everyone after being raped, is a fierce argument against patriarchal structures of domination. A shocking film that earned the director a prison sentence and was banned in his country of origin.
Speaking to the public after the screening, Souleymane Cissé explained that he had chosen to remove his protagonist’s voice to symbolize the fact that women are silenced in society.
“Male dominance is so deeply ingrained that it will take something radical to really change things, in Mali or anywhere else in the world,” he said. “Whether it’s male dominance, white dominance or subservience to capitalism, injustice is the real scandal. All my films carry within them a revolt against injustice.”
In an interview with France 24 earlier this year, on the occasion of the Fespaco film festival in Ouagadougou, the Malian director spoke of his desire for African cinema to “get out of the bottle and travel far, to places where it never occurs to people to see films from our continent”.
This was a theme he repeated at Cannes, while welcoming the record number of African films on the program and the presence of African female directors.
Souleymane Cissé lamented the persistence of “contempt” and reluctance to distribute African films in the West. As a consequence, “we are still not on an equal footing, which is a mistake, because cinema is precisely a means to reach others”. “Cinema can help people better understand our continent,” he added. “Denying people access to movies will only fuel misunderstandings.”
Adapted from its original in French
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