Pitch perfect
Co-production lab Open Doors will showcase 12 projects from Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa. Melanie Goodfellow profiles the selection
The fi lm-maker, who is producing
the picture through her Je t’aime Pic- tures, plans to shoot next summer in and around Ouagadougou, the capi- tal of Burkina Faso. “I would like to fi nd a co-producer
Leslie To Away Burkina Faso
Dir Leslie Tô Prod Je t’aime Pictures
Burkinabe fi lm-maker Leslie Tô says she was turned on to film-making after seeing Gianni Amelio’s The Sto- len Children while an undergraduate at Vassar College in upstate New York. Like Amelio’s Italian classic, about an abused brother and sister placed in the care of a police offi cer, many of Tô’s short fi lms feature chil- dren as central characters. Her 2006 Redefinition revolves
around a first-generation African girl in the US, whose worldview changes after an encounter with an old African immigrant. At Open Doors, Tô’s Burkina
Faso-set project Away (Ailleurs) is a coming-of-age tale about a young girl with a European stepfather, who connects to her African roots through a life-changing friendship with another girl. The fi lm-maker reveals the story
is inspired by her childhood. “It is a culmination of personal and fic- tional experiences, anchored in a time when girls could still be girls and dared to do and say things they wouldn’t be able to for much longer,” says Tô.
n 4 Screen International August 2012
who understands and shares my vision for the fi lm. Someone who sees possibilities in the industry for char- acter-driven stories from Africa,” she says of her hopes for Open Doors.
Guests at the 2011 Open Doors event
exploring notions of identity and beauty through the experiences of an African girl who moves to the West. “Akosua wanted to explore these
Akosua Adoma Owusu
Black Sunshine Senegal-Ghana
Dir Akosua Adoma Owusu Prod Karoninka
Akosua Adoma Owusu’s coming-of- age story Black Sunshine, set in the Ashanti town of Agogo in Ghana, revolves around the complex rela- tionship between a hairdresser and her albino daughter. The project is an uplifting tale in
which the teenage protagonist, Adjoa, ultimately comes to terms with her albinism and strikes out for a new life. Renowned Malian singer Salif Keita, who is also albino, has agreed to write the soundtrack. The project was born out of Owu-
su’s short My White Baby (Me Broni Ba), made while a student at the California Institute of the Arts,
same issues about otherness in her first fiction film,” says Senegalese producer Angele Diabang, who fi rst met Owusu at the Berlinale Talent Campus in 2008. “When she told me about her project, I fell in love with the fact we will talk about albi- nos but in a positive light where albi- nos are not facing a tragedy like in many African countries.” The themes of identity in the fi lm
are also a refl ection of Owusu and Diabang’s own life experiences. “Akosua grew up in America and
I divide my time between Paris and Senegal. We explore this notion of dual identity and mixing of cultures in our work,” says Diabang.
The Eye Of Ladji Mali
Dir Daouda Coulibaly Prod Les Films Cissé
Marseilles-born Doauda Coulibaly, of Franco-Malian descent, is one of Mali’s most promising up and com- ing directors. The fi lm-maker — who started out
Daouda Coulibaly
as a TV editor in France and is based in Mali’s capital, Bamako — was one of the four winners of Focus Fea- tures’ $10,000 Africa First short fi lm programme in 2009. Under the pro- gramme, Coulibaly made the 25-minute fi lm Tinye So about how younger generations of Malian peo- ple are failing to respect the tradi- tional Bambara belief systems. It won the bronze prize at the pan-Afri- can Fespaco Film Festival in 2011. Coulibaly’s Open Doors project
The Eye Of Ladji (Ladji Nye) revisits the theme of a society abandoning its customs, through the lives of two petty criminals in Bamako. Respected Malian film-maker Souleymane Cissé is producing the project through his Les Films Cissé, and to get it started has invested $12,300 (¤10,000) of private funds
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