Mati Diop’s Atlantique (Atlantics) kicked off the 27th FESPACO, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival that takes place bi-annually in the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou, in a screening that foreshadowed a couple of features of the 2021 festival. One of these was welcome, the other frustrating.
The most welcome thing first. It was a pleasure to see director Mati Diop speaking on the Cine Burkina stage before her film, and her appearance prefigured closing night where another woman stood on the awards stage, clutching the festival’s big prize, the Etalon de Yennega, clearly overwhelmed with emotion. Although she was accepting the award for the Gravedigger’s Wife on behalf of its male, first-time feature director Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, who was absent, the fact that the big night ended with a woman’s moment of victory onstage was apt for a continent where women own some of the most recognizable faces both in front of and behind the camera. The frustrating thing was that Atlantique was screened without English subtitles. It seemed like it might have been an oversight, until it became clear that it wasn’t. More on this later.
Outside of the screening halls, FESPACO was a bit of a shambles. Although it was launched back in 1969, it still hasn’t figured out basic things in 2021, which is quite unflattering for such an important event. The biggest failure this year was one that has occurred in the past: filmmakers getting brought to the festival after their films have already been screened. Blunders of this sort have gone under-reported over the years, perhaps because the film industry’s global elite are happy to be in a small African country where the film festival is nearly sacred, so central is it to its citizens’ existence. Or maybe they don’t care too much once the awards have been distributed. It can be quite a strange thing to observe incensed festival goers complaining loudly on a daily basis and then, at the festival’s close, expressing nothing but joy.
But even so, the most joy is reserved for French speakers. It can be incredibly frustrating for anyone who doesn’t speak the language to see films, since the program brochure doesn’t indicate which films have English subtitles. Viewers must take a seat in the cinema, praying that the film to be shown will have understandable subtitles, while they miss simultaneous screenings. Of course, it’s understandable that Burkina Faso is a French speaking country, but the disregard for a language like English at an international festival today is quite ridiculous.
This, of course, has implications for both the festival and its filmmakers. FESPACO’s international positioning as the most important film festival in Africa can be contested (a sign at Burkina Faso’s international airport boasts it is the capital of African film, no doubt because of FESPACO). English, many will argue, is the language of international cinematic success, and by doing too little to help filmmakers get noticed by media in that language, FESPACO is underserving those making their debut there. Programmers from outside of Africa also show up, hoping to snap up films-in-progress for world premieres at their own festivals. The big hitters don’t have a problem, as many of them have already shown their work in the global north before arriving at Ouagadougou. But the filmmakers who don’t get courted by those big festivals have only FESPACO for coverage.
And later, after the festival’s awards were announced and the big winners received another screening, the situation remained unchanged. One reason for this, as some in film circles say, is that FESPACO is a French (language) festival and a French (nationality) entity, so that, as long as some support is gotten from its former colonial administrator France, it will remain as it is, even if the battle being fought with English is an illusory one, having been won a long time ago and being now blatantly confirmed by English internet content. If this theory is fact, one needs only look at the Cannes Film Festival to note that different standards apply. How much French does Spike Lee, president of the 2021 Cannes jury, speak?
To be honest, in terms of plans that didn’t quite materialize, there are signs that FESPACO is heading for more inclusiveness between Anglophone and Francophone Africa—but that might depend on whether the festival’s current leader, Moussa Sawadogo, retains his position next year. That’s a decision that will be arrived at after some high-level politics far removed from the halls of Cine Burkina or Cine Neerwaya.
The area which has always been FESPACO’s biggest draw is its films, and this year was another giant feast of African cinematic goodies. There just isn’t another venue within the continent (and maybe even outside of it) with the mix FESPACO has to offer. The big, the small, the deep, the bizarre, the comic, the heavily political—FESPACO gives its audience everything and then some. The one note of concern is that several films were about the usual African suspects seen in the Western media: poverty, violence, trauma. One worries that African filmmakers, after years of getting certain images foisted on them, are now producing those images themselves. It’s a poor continent but surely there is some joy to be found here and there. Nonetheless, this rather miserable matrix has produced some quite wonderful films in the past. It may do so in the future, even if a larger bucket of themes is to be hoped for.
Admittedly, it is not quite clear what the future might hold for African cinema, given its many different countries and sensibilities. But a somewhat ideal (and in one case, idyllic) picture of the future was presented at FESPACO this year, as two films, Eyimofe and This Is Not a Burial, It Is a Resurrection, suggested two paths forward for quality African filmmaking. One: a small film well-made. The other: an expansive vision well executed.
The first, by Nigerian twin brothers Chuko and Arie Esiri, follows two characters who are inconsequential in the society they live in, but it gives their dreams of a better future an extraordinary amount of care—even when things don’t quite work out as planned. The other, by Lesotho auteur Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, is a poetic, ambitious yarn about one elderly woman’s defiance in a society that seeks to erase her pastoral heritage because of a move towards modernity. In essence, one film has young characters dreaming of departure; the other has an old character resolutely standing firm. Both films are in an oblique conversation about development, population, and immigration, which suggests they are politically charged. But it is to the filmmakers’ credit that the heavy political content doesn’t overwhelm the narrative. Both films are enjoyable and of such high quality that they ought to become required viewing for ambitious filmmakers looking to cover African grounds with their lenses.
Unfortunately, both films were shut out of FESPACO’s biggest awards, even if This Is Not a Burial won the cinematography award. Of course, that was a judgment made by Abderrahmane Sissako’s jury. But you can bet your house that posterity will make a different decision.
