In Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s stunning debut, Banel can scarcely stand to be separated from her lover, Adama, even for a few hours. But her passion and defiance alarm the elders, and the drought that consumes their village feels like a curse. This timeless fable of amour fou evokes ancient myth and Senegalese folk tale, but it could equally play as an American film noir. Desire is the agent of destruction, to put oneself above community and morality is to incur the wrath of the gods.
In Sy’s film, Adama — the young man — is relatively powerless, no matter that the village elders insist on investing him as chief. It’s Banel (a remarkable performance by Khady Mane) whose refusal to relax her demands of her lover that causes such turbulence. Richly textured, the arresting imagery carries the emotional force of the story, which builds inexorably to a powerful climax.
A powerful love story with a bruised heart.
Philip de Semlyen, Time Out
A striking debut that puts Sy on the map… Banel isn’t so much an unreliable narrator as she is the star of a fever dream where symbolism and reality meld.
Sophie Monks Kaufman, Indiewire
Ramata-Toulaye Sy
Khady Mane, Mamadou Diallo
Senegal/Mali/France
2023
In Pulaar and French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
Ramata-Toulaye Sy
Cinematography
Amine Berrada
Editor
Vincent Tricon
Original Music
Bachar Mar-Khalifé
Also Playing
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
A tense mystery and an act of radical protest, this film tells the story of an Iranian lawyer who’s lost his handgun and knows someone in his family took it. With every moment, his wife and daughters grow more afraid of him–yet none of them will confess…
Every Little Thing
If you thought Flow was an emotional rollercoaster, wait til you meet Cactus and Wasabi, baby hummingbirds fighting for their lives under the loving care of hummingbird-whisperer Terry Masear, an Angelino who makes it her mission to nurse injured birds.
Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat
In January 1961, seven months after Congolese independence, Patrice Lumumba is assassinated. In excavating the history of this political murder, this essay-film traces the complex and unlikely intersections of American jazz and Cold War geopolitics.
