North American Premiere
After turning down her unfaithful fiancé at the altar, Aya (Nina Mélo) leaves the Ivory Coast and starts a dreamy new life at a gourmet tea shop in Guangzhou, China. As her employer Cai (Chang Han) teaches her the ancient art of the tea ceremony, a sensual romance brews between them. But Cai is haunted by an unrealized dream: to be reunited with his estranged daughter Eva in Cape Verde, the child of an affair he kept hidden from his ex-wife Ying (Wu Ke-Shi). Must he keep a lid on his relationship with Aya too?
This long-awaited new feature from Oscar-nominated auteur Abderrahmane Sissako (Timbuktu) sweeps us off our feet with sleekly edited montages and sublime visual compositions. With the aesthetic flavour of Wong Kar-wai, steeped in a vibrant city nightscape of food stalls and beauty salons, the film explores the African diaspora’s search for cross-cultural harmony in China through its intriguing ensemble cast of characters. Black Tea serves up a bittersweet, metaphysical blend of unresolved dreams and desires.
Media Partner
Nina Mélo, Chang Han, Wu Ke-Xi
France/Mauritania/
Luxembourg/Taiwan/
Côte d’Ivoire
2024
In Mandarin, French, English and Portuguese with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
David Gauquié, Julien Deris, Denis Freyd, Charles S. Cohen, Jean-Luc Ormières
Screenwriter
Kessen Fatoumata Tall, Abderrahmane Sissako
Cinematography
Aymerick Pilarski
Editor
Nadia Ben Rachid
Production Design
Véronique Sacrez
Original Music
Armand Amar
Abderrahmane Sissako
Abderrahmane Sissako was born in Mauritania in 1961 and brought up in Mali. He went to the Soviet Union to attend the VGIK film school in Moscow where he made his first short films.
Filmography: Rostov-Luanda (1997); Life on Earth (1998); Waiting for Happiness (2002); Bamako (2006); Timbuktu (2014)
Photo by Chevié Link
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Lives of Others
This month's Talking Pictures film is a masterly Cold War thriller set in East Berlin. An agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives...
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other
This intimate and candid film by a younger husband and wife artist team is a delicate and immensely moving dual portrait of two artists, husband and wife, together and apart, at that point in life when the end casts a shadow over even the sunniest day.
Image: © Manon et Jacob and Final Cut For Real
Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story
Judging by this candid, funny, passionate biographical documentary, it would have been a wild ride to have been Irish novelist Edna O'Brien, or even to have been in her circle of friends and lovers. Well, for an hour and a half we can pretend we were.
Erupcja
Charli xcx headlines this indie gem about a young English couple coming unmoored over a few days in Warsaw. Will means to propose. Beth has cold feet -- and an escape hatch she has barely admitted to herself... Think Before Sunrise 2025.
Lingua Franca
Lingua Franca is a tender portrait of intimacy shaped by migration, vulnerability, and the quiet negotiations of belonging. Centered on an undocumented Filipina trans woman living in New York, the film moves with delicate restraint.