Africa’s biggest film festival focuses on strong women
Sira can’t wait: the nomad is on her way to meet her fiance with her family. However, the group is attacked mid-journey by Islamic terrorists and the men are murdered. Sira is trapped in the desert to face what she believes is certain death. But she is a fighter.
The film “Sira” by Apolline Traore tells the story of an exciting struggle for survival. “It’s about resistance, about never giving up,” the Burkina Faso director told DW.
And there’s something closer to her heart: portraying women as strong characters.
“I simply have to give them a voice. Most of the time they are portrayed as victims: people show women in refugee camps who lost their fathers or husbands. But it is these same women who protect their children. Who used dangerous escapes routes to save them.” Women, in fact, who demonstrated how to survive. According to Traore, it is precisely these women who play an important role in the fight against jihadists in Africa.
Where terror is a bloody reality
In Europe, “Sira” won the Panorama Audience Award for Best Feature at the recently concluded 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. For German viewers, the drama is far from them, but for Apolline Traore’s compatriots in Burkina Faso, it is a bloody reality.
For years, armed jihadists have terrorized the population. That’s why the director from Burkina Faso wanted to shoot her film in the north of her homeland – an authentic filming location where people have long suffered terrorist threats.
But things turned out differently. “Shortly before I traveled there with the film crew for three months, there was another attack. The government informed me that I would have to take soldiers with me for protection. But that probably would have gone down badly, they really have other responsibilities.”
Too dangerous to film in Burkina Faso
Apolline Traore had to find another filming location and ended up in Mauritania. The support there has been great, she says, but she is still very sad about not being able to film in Burkina Faso. Maybe, she hopes, it will work out next time.
And yet, she wants to focus on one of the many pressing social issues again. “I learned my trade in America,” she says, “but I can’t make people laugh with my films, I just cry. I just need to show the abuses that exist and what people have to suffer. For me, it’s also a kind of of therapy”.
Traore is not the only one highlighting bitter realities at the Pan-African Film and TV Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Known by the French acronym FESPACO, the festival also features films by Senegalese Moussa Sene Absa, who addresses forced marriage in “Xale, les blessures de l’enfance” (The Injuries of Childhood); Moroccan director Maryam Touzani, who tackles the taboo of homosexuality in “Le Bleu du Caftan” (The Blue Caftan); and Nigerian director Wale Oyejide, whose film “Bravo, Burkina!” tells the story of a young man vainly seeking his fortune in distant Europe.
Films by and for Africans
FESPACO only presents films by Africans: the aim is to offer them a platform to showcase their skills – not to present films from the US or Europe to the local population.
However, it is not easy to organize a film festival in a country where many inhabitants live in poverty and suffer from recurrent droughts. There are only four cinemas – too few for FESPACO’s large crowds. So the organizers improvised and simply showed them like outdoor movies.
This was already the case in 1969, when a group of film buffs launched FESPACO in Burkina Faso (then known as the Republic of Upper Volta). The country was then independent for only nine years.
Under French rule, Africans were prohibited from making films in the colonies. One of the first African films ever produced, “Afrique-sur-Seine” (Africa on the Seine), was made in Paris in 1955 by students. Among them was Paulin Soumanou Vieyra from Benin, considered a pioneer of African cinema.
‘The public wants to see our stories now’
So, in 1969, people in Burkina Faso didn’t have much experience with cinema, but they were passionate about it.
Since its inception, the festival has been held every two years, with a few exceptions.
“African cinema is the youngest in the world,” Apolline Traore told DW. “It was fully funded by the West for a long time. In the meantime, we’re trying to raise money for our movies.” She adds that she has the impression that “in the West they’ve run out of stories; the public now wants to see ours.”
But Traore sees the danger that financially strong countries could not only help with filming tips but also step in to show Africa’s history through a Western lens. “This is something we have to fight. We have to show the West that we are capable of producing our own story and that we tell it better than anyone else – because it is our story and we know it better than they do.”
confident women directors
There are now many outstanding African filmmakers, especially women. Of the 170 films – works from Egypt, Angola, Kenya, Morocco and Senegal, among others – that were submitted to FESPACO to compete for the coveted awards, about half were directed by women.
“I’m not at all surprised,” Tunisian jury president Dora Bouchoucha told DW. “And I don’t think it surprises anyone in all of Africa, just outside the continent. I made my first film 25 years ago and my crew was mostly female. The best production managers are women. Filmmaking is about details. And everybody knows that women are more attentive to detail. Also, women are less concerned about their ego. We make movies our way – and we do it very well.”
A cinematic plea for peace
FESPACO was inaugurated on the 25th of February by the Prime Ministers of Burkina Faso and Mali, as Mali is the guest of honor at this year’s festival.
Despite – or perhaps because of – all the problems that Burkina Faso, Mali and other African countries undoubtedly have, especially with terrorism, “The Culture of Peace” was chosen as the motto of FESPACO 2023.
“The world today faces many problems, all due to social inequalities, exclusion, extremism and the arms race”, states the festival’s homepage. Films can contribute to thinking together about how to ensure peace and social cohesion.
That’s what Apolline Traore also wants, who is in the race for the main prize, the Golden Stallion of Yennenga, for her film “Sira”. This trophy is also a tribute to strong women: Princess Yennenga was a warrior who went into battle riding her stallion without fearing anything or anyone.
The Ouagadougou Pan-African Film and TV Festival runs until March 4, 2023.
Source: DW
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