Category: Uncategorized

The dream chasers

Synopsis

Back in Gandiol, his hometown in Senegal, after eight years as a migrant in Spain, Mamadou seeks to be a positive force for his community. With help from his wife Laura and ubder the benevolent eye of Yaaye Khadi, Mamadou’s mother, he begins to build and share with his community the « active utopia » referred to in the book Mamadou wrote during his journey. The film takes us to a journey with Mamadou in his quest, to try to uncover his dream.

Biofilmography

Saliou Waa Guendoum SARR is a writer, composer and stage director whose nectar contributes to the universality of language, culture and representations. He believes that art can bring change and that cinema can help rebuild the way Africans see themselves. He directed Masque démasque in 2008, and Coup de filet en 2011 and Life saaraba illegal in 2016.

CO-PRODUCTION MARKET

Event dates : 25 February to 04 March 2023.

Application deadline: 25 January 2023

As a component of FESPACO PRO, the Co-Production Market “Yennenga Co-Production” is a platform directly linked to the existence or creation of funds to support co-production and the development of a market for cinema. This market is seen as a set of professional cultural production instances crossed by ideologies and imaginations in line with those of a transnational auteur cinema, and promoting a link between FESPACO’s artistic project and commercial interests of film markets. As an institution, FESPACO makes it a duty to bring cultural and artistic legitimacy to this co-production market. Film projects seeking funding must meet the selection requirements of a festival such as FESPACO, a festival of films which embody an author’s view of social or moral issues, disconnected from generic forms or reinterpreting them from an original perspective.

With that in mind, FESPACO welcomes Yennenga Co-Production, the first audio-visual co-production market in Francophone Africa.  From 25 February to 04 March 2023, Yennenga Co-Production will mobilize and facilitate business contact between 10 professional producers from Europe and Africa and 15 promoters of African film projects in production or recently completed films looking for an international career.

The first edition of the market will welcome fiction feature films by directors or producers from French-speaking Africa.

Film projects will be selected through a call for projects by an international committee. The 15 successful applicants will benefit from mentoring on the production of video-pitches on their film projects, participate in presentation sessions of their projects, in “One to One” meetings with producers and various funds present, in the presentation panel of funds and in networking sessions open to all invited professionals.

Yennenga Co-Production is designed and implemented in partnership with France National Centre of Cinematography (CNC), Senegal Film and Audio-visual Industry Promotion Fund (FOPICA), CNC of Wallonia Brussels International, Belgium, Luxembourg Film Fund, Francophonie Image Fund (OIF), and Mali Film Industry Support Fund (FAIC), with Collectif Génération Créative as technical partner.

Click here to apply

Shimoni

Geoffrey, 35, an introverted English teacher has just been released from prison after 7 years for killing his pregnant girlfriend. He has to restart his life in Shimoni, a sleepy village in rural Kenya, a place he loathes. There he stays with a rigid local Catholic priest, who is happy to take on this sinner. One Sunday after Mass, Geoffrey encounters BABA KARE, 50. On seeing the man, Geoffrey pees his pants and in a moment of rage kills one of the Priest’s calves. Days later he meets BEATRICE, 19, a cheeky village girl, who instantly falls for him and decides to pursue him. KIMANTHI, 40, Geoffrey’s brother visits, their father is dead and Geoffrey is prohibited from attending the funeral. Geoffrey destroyed, attacks his brother and during this altercation it comes out that Baba Kare sexually abused both men when they were boys, in this village. Geoffrey must get his revenge on Baba Kare. He starts to tutor his daughter as a way to get closer to him. But something unexpected happens when he starts to get close to his abuser.