The fishing boat with its captain and 30 passengers is not really equipped to travel long distances in Atlantic waters.
Pirogue is a general term to describe boats such as canoes or ‘dugouts’. On the West African coast large versions of the traditional canoe shape, powered by a single motor, are used for fishing. The local fishing industry is in decline from overfishing (including factory fishing by trawlers from the EU) and this gives a further impetus to the attempts to leave the region and migrate to where there might be jobs. Thousands have left the coasts of Senegal and Mauritania in open boats, attempting to reach European beaches. Most of those who have survived the trip have ended up in the Canaries, part of Spain. This film ends with a title informing us that 1 in 6 of these illegal migrants fails to survive – and many of the others are then ‘repatriated’ back to their home country.
Moussa Touré’s film is based on a novel and it tells the tale of one such journey from Dakar. In one sense the narrative is familiar, comprising a mix of the standard illegal migration story (what motivates both the migrants and the people who transport them?) and the ‘forced community trapped in a boat’ genre typified by the Hollywood disaster movie. One of the earliest examples of the latter was Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. The tragedy of La pirogue is that the travellers have chosen this ordeal. Some of them know the dangers, others are so desperate to leave that they probably don’t want to know.
Accommodation is rudimentary in the pirogue.
The film is handsomely mounted and looks good in a CinemaScope presentation. The narrative provides us with two main groups: the boat’s captain and his brother plus the trip’s organiser and others in their circle as opposed to the passengers who represent people from the interior including some from Guinea who speak a different language. Allied to these differences are familiar oppositions of young and old, secular and religious. There is enough potential narrative conflict to sustain the film’s relatively short running time and I found it gripping. If I’m honest though, I did think that as a suspense film – who will survive the trip, what kinds of dangers will the boat face? – there were too many clues to what might happen and I found myself in that familiar position of admonishing characters for not being careful enough with essential items of equipment. It will be interesting to see how the film goes down with audiences. It’s a mainstream popular film from Senegal with production values commensurate with European funding and technical support. My fear is that it might fall between two stools – perhaps not enough excitement for the mainstream but possibly not quite enough characterisation and observation for the arthouse. So far, it hasn’t got UK distribution, though it has opened in France and I think it is booked for North America. The people in the boat are a divided community and I’m not sure what this says about Senegal if the film is in any way metaphorical. I think it’s this thought that makes me wish that we found out more about the individual characters and their problems. But despite my slight misgivings I urge you to see this if you get the chance.
Rachel Mwanza as Komona and Serge Kanyinda as Magician in War Witch
Cornerhouse in Manchester starts a season of Francophone films from Europe, Africa, the Antilles and Quebec today. It’s an interesting programme compiled by Rachel Hayward and supported by Alliance française de Manchester and the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester. I’m helping to teach an associated evening class and I’ll be blogging on some of the films being screened. The Cornerhouse season includes the following titles:
It’s Not Me I Swear! (C’est pas moi, je le jure!, Canada 2008)
Thu 18 Oct at 18:30
A rare opportunity in the UK to see an earlier film by Philippe Falardeau, director of the wonderful Monsieur Lazhar.
Preview Laurence Anyways (Canada 2012)
Sun 21 Oct at 15:30
The new film by enfant terrible Xavier Dolan which will be on release in the UK and Ireland in December.
Black Shack Alley (Rue cases nègres, Martinique-France 1983)
Wed 24 Oct at 18:30
Another rare opportunity, this time to see a classic film no longer available in the UK. Directed by Euzhan Palcy and based on the book by Joseph Zobel this was a milestone film. I’ll be introducing this screening and posting material on the blog.
War Witch (Rebelle, Canada 2012)
Wed 7 Nov at 18:30
Canada’s entry for the Best Foreign Language film entry for the next Academy Awards. A prizewinner at festivals across the world, Kim Nguyen’s film about a girl forced to become a child soldier in an unnamed African country is one to seek out.
La pirogue(Senegal-France-Germany 2012)
Mon 12 Nov at 18:20
Another of this year’s festival favourites – Moussa Touré’s film about migrants from Africa hoping to reach Europe in open boats.
Preview Our Children (À perdre la raison, Belgium-Switzerland-France-Luxembourg)
Thu 15 Nov at 20:40
A starry cast: Niels Astrup, Tahar Rahim and Emilie Dequenne in Joachim Lafosse’s film based on a real story about a mother and her children faced with a difficult family situation. The UK release will be in 2013.
Sister(France-Switzerland 2012)
On release during November, please check the Cornerhouse listings.
Ursula Meier’s film about a young boy and his sister starring Gillian Anderson and Martin Compston alongside Lea Seydoux and Kacey Mottet Klein has both English and French dialogue. Meier’s realist style in this film has been compared to that of the Dardennes Brothers.
We received this piece from Andrea Swift at the New York Film Academy. It describes a film that may be of interest to our readers, so we decided to post it:
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Director Richard Wolf has produced more than 30 documentary films in his career, many for international television networks (CNN, BBC, etc.). Much of his work focuses on the plight of women in third world countries.
As he puts it the, “humanistic values that are deeply reflected in our films… are simple yet gripping because they tap into universal emotions.” In short, Wolf’s vision touches the heart. But his 2008 film,Women of the Sand, enthralls the eyes, the mind and the soul as well – at least according to the selection committee for Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. Last year, the film became one of the select few to enter the museum’s permanent selection – and for good reason.
Women of the Sand focuses on the women at the heart of communities of Islamic nomads in the Sahara Desert, specifically in Mauritania. An unmitigated, cinéma vérité experience of the women’s daily routines, carries filmgoers into the meager existence of this millennia-old culture and engages us in their struggle against growing desertification. The visuals are stunning – a sculptural contemplation of wind blowing across shape-shifting dunes that rise and drop. The occasional trees and bushes are as sparse as the humans who stand improbably against this arid climate. Those same winds also catch the thin fabrics of tents and lean-tos, and of the traditional fabrics worn by the men, women and children of these unsettled communities. Heads peaking out from inside their moulafas, the women tell their stories of survival in this harsh climate, of the challenges they navigate just to feed, cloth and educate their children. They also speak of the green plants that come forth in the rainy season – the basis of all that makes life worth living. Their focus is not on the dryness and the more frequent times when food is less plentiful, though to outsiders those stark climatic conditions make it impossible not to contemplate the fragility of life. These “women of the sand” are resilient people who speak of the friendliness of the desert and desert people. One woman says she prefers that to the coolness she observes between people in the cities she, evidently, has visited.
We also learn that the desert expands by about six miles per year, challenging their beloved and centuries old nomadic ways. Over a lifetime, that means 360 more miles of largely barren sand will overtake arable land, making those green plants a sparser and sparser presence in their world. It is a losing battle against scarcity that drives more interaction with non-nomads, disrupting their way of life. Long term, it threatens to seriously diminish, perhaps even end the nomad culture.
While MOMA selects films for its collection for a broad range of reasons, the unifying criteria, according to the institution’s website, is innovation. That innovation may come into play in the film’s structure, narration or in its success immersing the viewer in the subject. One particularly striking example ofWomen of the Sand’s immersive quality gives us real insight into the nomad’s experience of modernity: In a tent on a rug that are all that separates them from endless, depthless sand, flies walk on the women’s hands and wrists, as they type on the keyboard of a laptop computer with the same skill they later demonstrate creating traditional fabric on a loom. Technology may or may not be useful to them. One mother explains they do not consider it particularly impressive or important. But will their children – who attend school in a tent, seated on the ground, feel the same way? Through a string of such moments,Women of the Sand creates a compelling tension between its exploration of a vanishing way of life, and a simultaneously contemplation its abiding continuity.
Produced by C. Litewski and Lucy Barbosa, directed by Richard Wolf, Women of the Sand is available on DVD (see below). Wolf studied film direction at the New York Film Academy. He also studied documentary production at the Global Village School, also in New York. Part of his signature style is to blend very candid, personal one-on-one testimonies with monstrously out-proportioned imagery that is said to provide a global context to a very intimate story. The production company is Lobo Docs.
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Andrea Swift is Chair of the Documentary Program at the New York Film Academy. She earned her Masters in Fine Arts degree from Columbia University and was the executive producer of the ‘In the Life’ documentary series for the PBS network, among many other credits. Her ‘nuclear folktale’ Deafsmith was featured at the United Nations Earth Summit, won a Silver at the Chicago International Film Festival and took second prize at the American Film and Video Festival.
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A free low resolution streamed presentation of Women of the Sand is available on SnagFilms (with some forced ad breaks). The film can be purchased from the same website on this page or downloaded/rented on this page. The DVD appears to be Region 0 and the film was made in 2003.
We received this message from Martin Stein about a new African film to be developed via Kickstarter.com
I’ve read the message and checked out the website for the film proposal. It’s very interesting to see what ‘crowd-sourcing’ a film looks like in practice and the subject for the film is one that everyone ought to support – women’s education in West Africa. I’m still not quite clear exactly what kind of film is being proposed. From the very glossy proposal it looks like a film produced from the US about a social issue in Cameroon.
A little context is useful here. There is a growing trend for film projects to be developed by West African filmmakers with US partners. This is part of a coming together of Nollywood and African-American filmmakers to create films for both Nigerian and diaspora markets. The movements in the opposite direction have up to now been mostly concerned with US directors and actors working in South Africa, but also other parts of Africa – and Hotel Rwanda is one film mentioned in the message below. This proposal appears to include a range of creative talent drawn from the US, Nigeria and South Africa.
The driving force behind the proposal is Sahndra Fon Dufe, who is the writer and who plays the central character. She comes from Cameroon and has presumably trained in the US where she currently works. I can’t fault the proposal in any way and she fronts it persuasively. There is part of me that is excited by the prospect of a global project to “put Cameroon and its stories on the map”. But there is also another part of me slightly concerned by a US-led project to make, as the proposal puts it, “the first major production in Cameroon” which is a “virgin country for film”. I wish I knew more about film in Cameroon, but I think that there have been many locally-made films before – perhaps not in the region where the story is set? I suspect that the most activity has been in Francophone Cameroon but I would be surprised if there was no interest in the Anglophone part.
I confess that I’m sceptical about most of those films made by Hollywood in South Africa – will this be a better bet? Is it good to have a bigger budget because there are known stars attached? Are there any local Cameroonian actors and crew who will take part in the production and what are the plans to show the film in Cameroon? It would be good to see these questions addressed in the proposal. Anyway, have a look at the proposal, and especially the video presentation (via the link below), and make up your own mind.
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“A young African woman with dreams of becoming a teacher takes reading and writing lessons from a visiting American. But, when the male village elders find out, she is sentenced to death for breaking from tradition.
Yefon is a film that continues in the proud tradition of socially conscious, Africa-based cinema like Hotel Rwanda, Beat the Drum and Sarafina — but unlike those movies, its producers will come from the ranks of generous Kickstarter supporters: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/405663859/yefon-the-movie
It has already attracted the attention of Hollywood stars like Jimmy Jean-Louise (“Tears of the Sun” “Heroes”), Adriana Barraza (Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee, “Babel”) and Hakeem Kae-Kazim (“Hotel Rwanda”). The film is being co-produced by Justin Massion, the director of the Kickstarter campaign for “Space Command,” which brought in $75,000 in just three days, and ended with over $200,000—making it one of the crowd-funding platform’s top 10 projects.
“Yefon” is the brainchild of 22-year-old actress and filmmaker Sahndra Fon Dufe, who got her inspiration from too many similar, true stories from Africa. Broken-hearted by this sad reality, she and the production team have pledged to use a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the film, a companion documentary, books and related merchandise to build an all-girls school in Nso, the Cameroon village where “Yefon” is set.
As well as playing a role in helping to correct this grievous wrong and set free generations of women, Kickstarter contributors receive amazing gifts, including African couture, masks, jewelry and art; tickets to red carpet premieres; opportunities to meet the cast and crew; and more.
With only 9 days left to reach the goal of $50,000, we can offer more information, artwork and even interviews with Fon Dufe and others so you can help spread the word about this important project.
There are hundreds of films released every year in the US and the UK but films from one part of the world are still scarce. African films are screened only rarely and knowledge about African cinema is restricted. We are pleased therefore to promote two organisations doing something to plug the gap.
Cinémathèque Internationale of Philadelphia has launched a new film series in collaboration with the African American Museum of Philadelphia. The series will present one film every third Thursday of the month to be screened at the museum, located at 701 Arch St. Philadelphia, PA 19106. The programme began with Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl(Senegal/France 1966) and will feature Moustapha Diop’s The Doctor from Gafire (1986) in August. Jean‐Marie Téno’s 1993 political documentary Africa, I Will Fleece You!, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s surreal allegory Hyenas (1992), and Issa Traore de Brahima’s 2006 The World is a Ballet fill out the rest of the programme. The initial series ends in December with the locally shot Night Catches Us, a Black Panther narrative starring Anthony Mackie. Director Tanya Hamilton will be in attendance for a Q&A following the film.
The series programmer Neal Dhand says:
“It’s a great reflection of our combined mission: bring films, some of which have never been screened in Philadelphia, to a larger audience and open a discussion on the politics and issues at play, as well as the evolving cinematic values in African filmmaking and how they compare to the aesthetics that an American audience is accustomed to.”
So, if you can get to Philadelphia, you’ve got the chance to see some rare African films. The Cinémathèque is a repertory foreign film programmme curated by an independent media art collective. It shows a range of international cinema and we like the statement that heads its webpapges:
“Conceived to be hands-on and intimate, screenings are coordinated at various designated venues within Center City Philadelphia. The intention of these screenings is to expand the discussion surrounding international film language.”
You can subscribe to a newsletter from the Cinémathèque (via the website) and keep up to date with events.
In Scotland, African in Motion (AiM) offers something similar with screenings and discussions throughout the year and a festival in Edinburgh which this year runs from 25 October until 2 November with a theme of ‘Modern Africa‘. There will be a Symposium on African Popular Culture and a Short Film Competition. Screenings will be in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.
AiM lists a range of events that take place in Edinburgh and Glasgow and also provides news about other African cinema related events elsewhere in the UK and in Europe via its very useful newsletter. The festival has also been on tour around Scotland and the website has a resources section on how to buy African films. AiM also runs a Facebook page and a blog. It really is an excellent access point for African cinema and we like its approach, set out on the website:
“The main aims of the festival have been, since its inception, to introduce Scottish audiences to the brilliance of African cinema and to overcome the under-representation and marginalisation of African film in British film-going culture. We believe that the best way to learn about Africa is to listen to African voices and to view representations created by African themselves, as these often counter the stereotypical representations we see from Africa in mainstream media in the West. But our main reason for screening the films is because we believe they are great films which should be seen the world over. Over the past six years we have screened over 200 African films to audiences totalling around 15,000 people!”
It was inevitable that the success of the Nigerian video film industry would eventually lead to an expansion into cinema films that are designed to appear on the multiplex screens of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt and which will have the potential to sell in the international market. These films have started to appear on DVDs coming into the UK and now a new distributor, Talking Drum Entertainment has joined the UK Film Distributors’ Association and announced its first cinema release. Tango With Me will be released in UK cinemas on August 24. Bookings include screens at Odeon, Vue and Cineworld. The film stars Genevieve Nnaji and Joseph Benjamin as a young couple facing complex issues in their marriage. Mahmood Ali-Balogun directs and produces for his company Brickwall Communications.
Nollywood films have already had isolated London screenings – one or two screenings in around a dozen London cinemas – see the Talking Drum Entertainment Facebook page. The new UK release policy promises to bring the films to the wider African diaspora community in the UK.
Tango With Me is described as a ‘romantic drama’ – I suspect ‘melodrama’ would be a better description. Talking Drum Entertainment has its own YouTube channel and there are trailers for three more of its films there. The three span the romance-melodrama range with social issues such as immigration and African identity plus the ‘return to source’ theme which in Nollywood sometimes involves African religious/supernatural narratives.
We’ll be reviewing one of these films soon. In the meantime we’re looking forward to the opening of Tango With Me. Here’s the trail:
The Battle of Algiers is an extraordinary film for a number of reasons, primarily the impartiality with which the events are portrayed and the style in which it is shot. It was made just after Algerian independence from France and focuses upon the battle for the capital city in 1957, which although a failure for the National Liberation Front (FLN) at the time, sowed the seeds for the eventual withdrawal of France.
Director Gillo Pontecorvo drew upon the Italian tradition of neo-realism by using non-actors, except for the vital role of Colonel Mathieu, and location shooting. The latter was possible as the film had the co-operation of the Algerian government. Despite the fact that the government’s involvement might suggest a propaganda, nation-building, purpose for the film, Pontecorvo, and screenwriter Franco Solanas, do not portray the French as monsters.
Indeed, the even-handedness of the way each side is presented is quite remarkable; both commit atrocities and deaths on both sides are shown to be equally tragic. For example, the bombing of the Casbah, by off duty French policemen, is followed by the equally cold-blooded bombing of, amongst other places, a milk bar full of young people. Whilst it is clear that the atrocity committed by the French was answered by Algerian revenge, Pontecorvo spends more time emphasising how innocent the French victims are through a series of eyeline matches from the woman planting the bomb. The aftermath uses the same music, Bach’s B minor Mass, which also accompanied images of the dead being dragged from the rubble in the Casbah.
Later, Algerian ‘freedom fighters’ rampage through town in an ambulance shooting anyone they can. This is in response to the torturing of Algerians as the paratroopers tried to track down the FLN’s leadership. Col. Mathieu is even allowed to justify the use of torture, though this is used to illustrate politicians’ hypocrisy. As he says, if you wish Algeria to remain French then it must be done. Mathieu is no cardboard villain but a compassionate, professional soldier, played with great charisma by Jean Martin (who’d lost a part because he signed a petition supporting Algerian independence). On two occasions, when French passers-by attack Algerians in hysterical revenge for killings, it is gendarmes who come to the rescue. It’s not obvious as to why the French banned the film for many years.
I should make clear that the film doesn’t condone torture; the scenes are quite horrific and the film’s viewpoint is obviously anti-colonialist. The French should not be there; there should be no reason for torture.
Unlike the neo-realists, the event portrayed is not insignificant but a decisive moment in Algeria’s fight for freedom. Also, the use of faux newsreel footage (the image was processed to look grainy) is a departure from neo-realist technique. It does, however, give the film immense immediacy. I have to keep reminding myself that the film is a recreation; Paul Greengrass achieves the same effect with Bloody Sunday (UK, 2002).
A final point to make, and something that has been reflected in the Arab Spring, is the vital role of women in the uprising. Three women plant the bombs that kill many and the final shot of the film is a woman, holding the national flag, who keeps coming forward despite being pushed back by French security forces.
The Battle of Algiers is one of the greatest films of the 20th century.
Youssouf Djaoro as Adam, disconsolate in the gate attendant’s uniform
A Screaming Man is Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s third film about fathers, sons and conflict. Unlike the two earlier films, Abouna and Daratt, this new film features the war in Chad directly. Civil wars have been a feature of Chadian life since soon after independence. Since 1965 there have been only around 19 years of ‘peace’. Chad’s wars are connected in various ways with wars in Sudan and the Central African Republic. Since the third regional player in Chad’s affairs is Libya, Chad is in a very unfortunate position in the ‘dead centre’ of Africa. France held Chad as a colony for just 40 years between 1920 and independence in 1960. 1,000 French troops are still in the country, supporting the present regime in its fight against ‘rebel insurgents’.
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun is a Chadian by birth who now lives in Bordeaux but visits Chad regularly to make films. He has an arrangement from his previous film Daratt which provides a Chadian producer on the ground and a Belgian partner for the French company he worked with this time. With a host of other soft money sources the production rustled up €2 million for a six week shoot. The result is a visually stunning ‘Scope production. It has a very simple story which is powerfully told (and performed). It is, however, accessible on many different levels, some more difficult than others and aspects of the film’s narrative still puzzle me.
Outline (some Spoilers – it’s a simple narrative)
Adam is a man in his late 50s still working as a swimming pool attendant in a western hotel in N’Djamena, the Chadian capital. His friends call him ‘Champ’ since he once won a Central African swimming championship. Adam’s 20 year-old son Abdel works with him and enjoys teaching swimming to children. Adam’s only immediate problem is that the local ‘chief’ of his community is pressurising him into making his contribution to the funding needed by the regime in power to fight the rebels threatening the city. Adam has no money, but he knows that the chief has already been forced to send his own son to fight in the civil war. But then Adam is called in to the hotel office to learn that the Chinese owners of the privatised hotel have decided that his son can do the swimming pool job and that he has been demoted to attendant on the hotel gate, letting cars in and out. Adam is devastated. The pressure from the chief is still there and we aren’t too surprised when the Army come to take Abdel, telling him that he is drafted. By this stage Adam is barely speaking to anyone. What will he do when Abdel’s pregnant girlfriend turns up?
Commentary
The film’s title is taken from a poem by Aimé Césaire, born in the French colony of Martinique and one of the founders of the Négritude movement – the promotion of Black culture through the intellectual and cultural life of Francophone Africa and the Caribbean. The supporters of Négritude see it as an anti-racist and anti-colonialist movement validating African identity, but the great Senegalese writer and filmmaker Sembène Ousmane was opposed to it, particularly as advanced by the Senegal President at the time of independence, Léopold Senghor. Sembène saw the movement as backward-looking and subservient to Francophone culture in Africa. It’s significant, I think, that whereas Sembène, once able to make his films without a controlling French producer, always sought to make his films in local Senegalese languages, Haroun’s characters generally speak French and Arabic – the ‘official languages’ of Chad. Apart from anything else, this makes class positions difficult to determine. Adam is broke but he runs a motorbike and sidecar and has a house and yard. Is he working class or is he privileged in this society?
The poem by Césaire has the title ‘Return to My Native Land’. I can’t find the whole poem online but the relevant section includes the lines:
“And above all, my body as well as my soul, beware of assuming the sterile attitude of a spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of miseries is not a proscenium, a man screaming is not a dancing bear . . .”
The meaning of this seems reasonably clear. We are being urged not to be spectators of misery but to become involved. At least that’s how I read it – other interpretations, especially by those who know the poem, welcomed. I seem to remember reading that Haroun has said that Adam is ‘screaming’ at God for not intervening in the tragedy that is befalling his family.
I’ve read several reviews that suggest that Adam ‘sold’ his son to the Army to get his job back. I don’t buy that. Adam is devastated when he loses his job and devastated further when he realises that he will lose his son. As often happens, I think it depends on who you identify with in these stories. If you are older you are bound to feel more keenly for Adam. As the gatekeeper in a uniform far too small for him, Adam is reminiscent of the figure played by Emil Jannings in Murnau’s The Last Laugh (Germany 1924). 55 in many poorer African states is an age beyond the average life expectancy. The African world is for the young (which makes their sacrifice in war even more terrible). Haroun shows this in many ways but perhaps most powerfully simply by taking away the power of speech from the father.
One other aspect of the narrative intrigues me. Adam is called ‘Champ’ by his colleagues. How ironic is this? In 2000 at the Sydney Olympics a swimmer from Equatorial Africa called Eric Moussambani was nicknamed ‘Eric the Eel’ by the tabloids in the UK and elsewhere because he entered on a wild card and swam the slowest 100m race anyone at the games had seen in an international event. Of course there were accusations of racism towards the journalists/sub-editors who puffed the story – but on the other hand something similar had happened with the British ski jumper Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards at Calgary in 1988. I have no knowledge of the Central African Swimming Championships but I suspect that there are few pools for swimmers to train in and that those that do exist are probably in luxury hotels. So, I’m still not sure what the ‘Champ’ nickname means except as an ironic reference to Adam’s declining status. I won’t spoil the film’s ending but it does have a connection to the water. (Chad, I’ve learned from researching this also has a large lake in what is a country with significant areas of desert.)
I enjoyed the film very much and I’m glad that Haroun is able to make films that get an international release (and in this case a Cannes Prize in 2010). He and Abderrahmane Sissako are the only African directors who have regularly had their films shown in the UK in the last few years. I think that a couple more titles by directors from elsewhere in Africa are going to appear soon. Much as I admire Haroun’s artistry, I hope other titles also refer to contemporary African popular culture.
If I have one criticism of Haroun it is that the women in this film are almost completely marginalised. That’s a shame, especially as the welfare of pregnant women in Chad and the high levels of mortality of both babies and mothers during childbirth is something that has been recognised in Europe. So if you go and see this film (and you should), how about also giving a donation to ‘Safer Birth in Chad‘?
Here’s a subtitled trailer to whet your appetite (the beautiful song is by Djénéba Koné the young woman who plays Abdel’s girlfriend):
