News : 3 African films at the Critics’ Week at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival

Une histoire d’amour et de désir by Leyla Bouzid is part of the official selection for Cannes Critics’ Week to be held from July 6 to 17, 2021. It will be the closing film of this section. In the cast, we find Sami Outalbali in the main role of Ahmed and Zbeida Belhajamar in the role of Farah. The film tells the story of Ahmed, 18, French of Algerian origin who grew up in the suburbs of Paris. On the benches of the university, he meets Farah, a young Tunisian full of energy recently arrived in Paris. While discovering a body of sensual and erotic Arabic literature that he never knew existed, Ahmed falls deeply in love with her and although literally overwhelmed by desire, he will try to resist it.

It is a feature film produced in 2020 by Sandra Da Fonseca of Blue Monday Productions. It should be noted that Leyla Bouzid has already received an award in a category annexed to the Cannes festival in 1996, entitled “Young talent women in motion” for her first film A peine j’ouvre les yeux.

The Gravedigger’s Wife by director Khadar Ayderus is a film from Somalia. It is a feature film of 82-minute. There are actors such as: Omar Abdi, Yasmin Warsame, Kadar Abdoul-Aziz, Ibrahim, Samaleh Ali Obsieh, Hamdi Ahmed Omar, Awa Ali Nour, Amina Ayanleh Omar. In the film, Guled and Nasra are a loving couple, living in the poor neighborhoods of Djibouti with their son Mahad. However, their family’s balance is threatened: Nasra suffers from severe kidney disease and needs emergency surgery. The operation is expensive and Guled is already working hard as a gravedigger to make ends meet: how do you raise the money to save Nasra and keep a family together?

The film will have its World Premiere during Critics’ Week.

The third African film to make this selection is Omar El Zohairy‘s Feathers from Egypt. He speaks of a passive mother, devoted body and soul to her husband and children. Locked in a monotonous daily life, punctuated by banal and repetitive tasks, she makes herself as small as possible. A simple magic trick goes awry on her four-year-old’s child birthday and it is an avalanche of absurd and unlikely catastrophes that befell the family. The magician turns her husband, an authoritarian father, into a chicken. The mother has no choice but to step out of her reserve and assume the role of head of the family, moving heaven and earth to find her husband. Struggling for her survival and that of her children, she gradually becomes an independent and strong woman.

This 1h52 film was produced by Juliette Lepoutre in co-production Pierre Menahem. Director Omer studied at the Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo, Egypt and his first short film “Breathe Out” premiered at the 8th Dubai International Film Festival where he won the jury prize. Feathers is Omer‘s first feature film.

Lydie Pierre Nsakamo