cmcikings

Discussing Senegalese film Banel & Adama at the Cambridge Film Festival with The New Black Film Collective

Estrella Sendra and Jasmine Bernard-Brooks (The New Black Film Collective) introducing Banel & Adama at the Cambridge Film Festival (Photo: Mike O’Brien)

Following the screening of Astel, the first short film directed by Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy (2021) at King’s College London last Spring during the Decolonising Film Festivals and African Cinemas networking event, we were pleased to be invited to the Cambridge Film Festival to introduce and discuss Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s first feature length film, Banel & Adama (2023).

Banel & Adama premiered internationally at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, making history as the second film by a black African woman filmmaker to be included in the competitive section of the festival. Earlier in October, Banel & Adama also premiered in the UK during the BFI London Film Festival, followed by a Q&A with the director, chaired by Nadia Denton, a guest speaker at CMCI for the third-year undergraduate module ‘Events and Festivals: From Conception to Realisation’.

Ramata-Toulaye Sy (left) in the Q&A of Banel and Adama during the BFI London Film Festival, chaired by Nadia Denton (right). (Photo: Estrella Sendra)

The film is a love story set in Fouta, a rural area in the north of Senegal whose main source of income is agriculture and cattle. Entirely filmed in Pulaar, the language spoken in that part of the country, and with a delicate direction of photography and soundtrack, the story of Banel and Adama is not just a love story, but also, a coming-of-age story by a young, independent woman, Banel, who is in continuous negotiation of her place in the community. The magic realism in the film serves to attribute the young woman mythical features, as a woman embodying the possibility of a world renaissance, amidst the impact of climate change and diverse forms of social injustice.

During the Cambridge Film Festival screening, Dr Estrella Sendra had the opportunity to share insights on the Senegalese film industry and her responses to the film, in conversation with Jasmine Bernard-Brooks, from the New Black Film Collective, with whom the festival had partnered up to increase the diversity of international films included in the programme. Estrella Sendra had previously collaborated with them on several occasions, as the previous director of the Cambridge African Film Festival (2014 and 2015) and advisory board member. The screening took place in the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse las Tuesday 24 October. The Cambridge Film Festival took place from 19 to 26 October, celebrating its 42nd edition, and presented by The Cambridge Film Trust.