A thing I like to do at film festivals is go see the African films, because to my mind, or at least in my experience, those are the least likely to get a regular release after a festival. They also interest me, because the experience of the African continent feels quite different from that elsewhere in the filmmaking world, and I am always open to new experiences (in film, if not so much in life). So I had plenty to see at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2023. There was indeed an entire retrospective devoted to Safi Faye (mentioned below), and whose shorter works I wasn’t able to write sufficient words about to include, though she has a small role in the Jean Rouch film (below). I’ll do a second post about the African documentaries, including one that probably qualifies more as a fiction film.
Banel & Adama (2023). This is a debut film by a French woman filmmaker whose family background is in Senegal, and she’s made a film based in a rural village there. The Melbourne festival is also showing a retrospective of films by the Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye and so there is a feeling in common there, in terms of the setting and the interest in women’s stories, though a lot of African filmmaking has focused on these more traditional communities, suggesting a way of life that predates colonialism. Of course, the characters here—though there’s little that ties them to any specific point of time—are hardly unaffected by the West, most prominently I think via what I see as the strongest underlying theme here, which is climate change and climate crisis. The herds are dying, the maintenance of the village continuity is slender, and our male protagonist (Adama, played by Khady Mane) has to make some tough decisions that eventually put him at odds with his headstrong and independent wife Banel (Mamadou Diallo), who wants something more and better for them, free of what she seems to see as patriarchal impositions. As a lead character, she has complexity: she’s right in some ways but she’s also difficult and uncompromising in ways that make her a pariah to her village. There are other themes too, and a great deal of feeling to the lush cinematography of the desert setting, but if there are flaws, it’s worth remembering this is a debut and I think the filmmaker has a lot of promise to keep making great African cinema.
Goodbye Julia (2023). I had no expectations from this film set in Sudan’s capital Khartoum in the years leading up to the secession of the south, but it ended up winning me over. Some of it is a little clunky and there is a tendency to over explaining the personal relationships between the central characters and particularly the artistic dreams of one of the leads, but the performances are all great and it looks gorgeous. It hinges around a moral quandary of a rich ‘northerner’ who feels guilty for the death of a South Sudanese man at the hands of her more orthodox husband (who despite his actions also expresses some fairly nuanced points about racism and privilege). She takes in the murdered man’s widow as her servant and things move on from there. A fine début.
Deserts (2023). I booked this, perhaps because I was hoping for some of the same deadpan humour of Moroccan film The Unknown Saint of a few years back (which shares a cinematographer), and to be fair there is some comedy in shots of these two hapless bank employees sent to collect debts from poor people who clearly have no way of repaying their debts, and so find themselves carting off carpets and goats for their resale value. So the set-up is promising. It’s just that this film clearly has deeper metaphysical ideas at play, and there’s a sort of fabulistic quality to it, as the journey gets darker and eventually starts following another character entirely, moving from the light comedy of the start into something properly existential. The problem for me is that it’s difficult to follow quite what’s going on, and despite some gorgeous shots and a commitment to the long-take, it’s rather slow in a way that doesn’t feel like it really pays off.
Little by Little (1970). A productive and fascinating satire from French filmmaker Jean Rouch, it’s set in Niger and follows a Nigérien man as he travels to Paris to research multi-storey architecture, intending to make Niamey a capital with a skyscraper. There’s a delightful sequence that applies ethnography from the reversed perspective of an African coming to a European capital city that’s funny and revealing, but the rest of the film follows through on the plot in ways that feel a little peripatetic. There’s a documentary quality to the unforced camerawork, a little out of focus, zooming to catch details, and it never lost me entirely as a project, it just felt unfocused narratively somehow, though at its best it really is a great film.
CREDITS
Banel e Adama (Banel & Adama, 2023) [Senegal/Mali/France] — Director/Writer Ramata-Toulaye Sy; Cinematographer Amine Berrada; Starring Mamadou Diallo, Khady Mane; Length 87 minutes. Seen at the Capitol, Melbourne, Wednesday 16 August 2023. 
وداعا جوليا Wadaan Julia (Goodbye Julia, 2023) [Sudan/Egypt/France/Germany/Saudi Arabia/Sweden] — Director/Writer Mohamed Kordofani محمد كردفاني; Cinematographer Pierre de Villiers; Starring Siran Riak سيران رياك, Eiman Yousif إيمان يوسف, Nazar Gomaa نزار جمعة; Length 120 minutes. Seen at ACMI, Melbourne, Wednesday 9 August 2023.
Déserts (Deserts, 2023) [Morocco/France/Belgium/Germany] — Director/Writer Faouzi Bensaïdi فوزي بن السعيدي; Cinematographer Florian Berutti; Starring Fehd Benchemsi فهد بنشمسي, Abdelhadi Talbi عبدالهادي الطالب; Length 124 minutes. Seen at ACMI, Melbourne, Sunday 13 August 2023. 
Petit à petit (Little by Little, 1970) [France/Niger; Rosenbaum 1000] — Director/Writer/Cinematographer Jean Rouch; Starring Damouré Zika; Length 96 minutes. Seen at ACMI, Melbourne, Saturday 5 August 2023.
filmcentric 