(aps) – Senegal is the guest country of honor at the 15th edition of the international women’s film festival in Salé (Morocco), scheduled for September 26 to October 1, the organizers announced.
The country guest of honor “this year is Senegal, a country considered as one of the precursors of cinema on the scale of the African continent and for all that it shares with Moroccan cinema”, they underlined in a press release of which the APS obtained a copy.
Senegal is also considered a “leading country in initiatives aimed at promoting film culture”, they add.
The organizers announce that the film “Atlantic” (2019), directed by Franco-Senegalese Mati Diop, will be screened on September 26 at the opening of the Salé festival, near Rabat.
It had been presented in official competition, in 2019, during the 75th edition of the Cannes festival in France, of which it won the “grand prize” that year.
Three other Senegalese films – feature, fiction and documentary – dealing with the female question and its impact on Senegalese society will also be screened during this festival.
This is the documentary “Congo, a doctor to save women” (2014) by Angèle Diabang, whose director pays tribute in this way to Congolese gynecologist and human rights activist Denis Mukwkégé, winner of the Nobel Prize for peace in 2018.
“We have time for us” (2019) by Katy Léna Ndiaye, which portrays the smoky Burkinabe activist and rapper of the “le broom citoyen” movement, is one of the other two films on the program, with ” des étoiles” (2013) by dyana gaye, a film about emigration.
The director of the Africa women’s film festival in Dakar, the Franco-Senegalese martine ndiaye, will be a member of the official feature film jury for this edition of the salé festival during which 10 films in this category, including nine directed by women, will be in competition.
In the batch of documentary films, five films from eight countries are in the running, including four made by women.
The juries will award a total of nine prizes, including the “grand prize” of the Salé Women’s Film Festival.
A posthumous tribute will also be paid to French filmmaker Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020), a pioneer of African cinema, through the screening of her restored feature film “sambizanga”, co-produced in 1972 by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and France.
This film had received at the time the tanit d’or at the Carthage Cinematographic Days, in Tunisia, and the price of the Catholic Office of Ouagadougou at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (fespaco) in Burkina Faso.
“His cinema is poetic, but also political and committed. She is considered a figurehead of African cinema and the first female director on the continent”, underline the organizers.
The director and director of the Amiens film festival, Anouchka de Andrade, daughter of Sarah Maldoror, will be the president of the official feature documentary jury.
Tributes will also be paid to five film and audiovisual professionals for their cinematographic journey.
According to a press kit devoted to this 15th edition of the women’s film festival in Salé, the organizers are also planning a “special Africa”, as part of the celebration of “rabat, capital of African culture” for the year 2022 and 2023.
This initiative aims to “pay homage to the feminine images and sounds of Africa”, through a panorama of sub-Saharan cinema and the screening of eight films representing 8 countries.
“These films are made by women, dealing with the question of women and gender”, inform the organizers of the festival.
Many activities are on the program for this edition of the Salé festival, including a seminar on the theme “the love of cinema in Morocco: from cinephilia to criticism”.
The international women’s film festival in salé is organized by the association bou regreg, created by women and men native to salé or working in salé, who have decided to put themselves at the service of the development and promotion of this locality. .