This year’s 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is fast approaching, running from 14-25 May. The Africa Report takes a sneak peak at what films the continent will be bringing to one of the industry’s largest events.
Published in The Africa Report
The presence of African film at the Cannes Film Festival has grown over the past decade, and 2023 was a historic year for African representation in Cannes, with 15 titles incorporated into the festival. Two films from the continent competed for the top award, the Palme d’Or: a Tunisian docu-fiction Les Filles d’Olfa (Four Daughters), and a Senegalese film Banel and Adama. In addition, African nationals figured on the main competition’s jury: Zambian-Welsh filmmaker Rungano Nyoni and Moroccan filmmaker and actress Maryam Touzani.
This year has seen a drop in the number of stories being screened from the continent – African films did not score any nods in the main competition. But the silver lining comes with the names on jury panels: Baloji, the Belgian-Congolese singer and filmmaker as a jury co-president in the Golden Camera selection and Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire as a member of the Critics Week jury panel.
Africa-friendly category
Often when films from the continent are screened at Cannes, they are included in the Un Certain Regard (A certain look) category. Two of the five jury members in this year’s Un Certain Regard are representing Africa: Asmae El-Moudir and Maïmouna Doucouré.
Moroccan filmmaker and producer El-Moudir is known in Cannes for her film The Mother of All Lies, which premiered in the same segment last year, winning the Directing Prize.
New to Cannes is Doucouré, a French-Senegalese filmmaker, born to Senegalese parents. Maman(s), her highly successful second short inspired by her encounters with polygamy in her family, has been screened at more than 200 festivals, winning dozens of awards including a César Award for Best Short Film (2017).
This year, two films from the continent will be presented in Un Certain Regard.
Last year’s jury member Nyoni returns with a comedy-family-drama On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. While the plot of the film has not yet been revealed, it is meant to explore human relationships in Zambia and Guinea. Cannes director Thierry Fremaux described it as a “very strong” comedy-family-drama.
The film is a follow up from the director’s I Am Not a Witch (2017), which explored witchcraft beliefs in Zambia. It was nominated for the Golden Camera (an award offered to the best first feature film in a respective category) in the Directors’ Fortnight section in the 70th edition of Cannes, and won a BAFTA for outstanding debut by a British filmmaker, among numerous other awards.
The Village Next to Paradise by Australia-based Somali director Mo Harawe vies for both the Un Certain Regard award and a Golden Camera. It’s the first entry from this young and highly successful director. His film presents the realities of a Somali village where a family navigates between pursuing individual goals and facing the intricacies of modern life.
L’histoire de Souleymane, directed by French filmmaker Boris Lojkine, will also be screened in Un Certain Regard. The Franco-Guinean production follows two days in the life of Souleymane, a Guinean delivery man living in Paris, who is preparing for his asylum interview. The twist is he is recounting someone else’s story to the officials.
Music of Africa in films
This year, two titles of the non-competitive section showcase the marginalised music or culture from their respective countries.
The Cannes Premiere section which screens Un Certain Regard’s runner-up, presents Everybody Loves Touda by a Cannes-regular, Moroccan director and screenwriter Nabil Ayouch. Filled with singing and dancing, the film follows Touda, a traditional singer from a small Moroccan village, and the challenges that come her way.
With six previous entries to the festival – starting with Horses of God (2012) – Ayouch has made Cannes his home. His Casablanca Beats, a drama about the world of hip-hop artists, was the first film by a Moroccan director to participate in the festival’s Main Competition, in 2021.
Unlike Ayouch, Egyptian artist/curator and filmmaker Hala Elkoussy is new to Cannes. Her entrée to Directors’ Fortnight is marked with East of Noon, “a fable about musician Abdo, who rebels against his elders, seeking freedom through his art in a confined world outside of time,” the film’s synopsis states.
North Africa in the lead
North African countries continue to dominate at the festival, including at the International Critics Week, which is attaining its 63rd edition this year. Embracing directors’ first or second works, this segment will screen 11 films, including one from Egypt and two by directors of North African descent.
The world of rebellious artists returns in Rafaat Einy ll Sama (The Brink of Dreams) from Egypt. Directed by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir, their first feature-length documentary follows an all-female, all-Coptic theatre troupe who rebel against the constraints imposed on them by their traditional backgrounds.
The films in Critics Week ‘Special Screenings’ play out of competition. La Mer Au Loin (Across the Sea) will be screened this year. It is their second feature-length film by French-Moroccan director and screenwriter Saïd Hamich Benlarbi. The melodrama depicts the life of Nour, an exiled young man chasing his dreams in Marseille. According to the director’s accounts, the film is about “raï (Algerian folk music), love and friendship”, pointing particularly to Raï as an important protagonist of the film.
The French-Algerian director, screenwriter and editor, Emma Benestan will close the Critic’s Week with Animale, also presented out of competition. The film stars Oulaya Amamra, a promising French Moroccan actress. Set in France’s Camargue region, the film follows Nejma, a young woman from a bull ranch who trains to win the male-dominated raseteurs championship. But things go awry after a rogue bull goes loose, terrifying the community.
Continental connections
African-related topics are also present in films and projects from outside the continent.
Raoul Peck’s documentary, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found will screen in the Special Screening category. It follows Ernest Cole’s journey as the first black freelance photographer in apartheid South Africa.
The Haitian-born multi-award-winning filmmaker spent 25 years in the Republic of Congo. His 2016 documentary thriller I Am Not Your Negro was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards. Peck also had a couple of entries in Cannes including the documentary Lumumba, about Patrice Émery Lumumba, leader of the Congolese National Movement, and the country’s first prime minister.
French-Senegalese novelist Marie NDiaye’s La Vengeance m’Appartient (Vengeance belongs to me) was chosen among 18 winners of Shoot the Book, a parallel initiative that selects the best literary works with the potential of screen adaptation. The authors are then invited to Cannes to pitch their novels to film and TV producers.
Ati Metwaly 