Souleymane Cissé © FDC / M. Petit
SPECIAL SCREENING – Oka (Our House) by Souleymane Cissé also speaks out for Mali
This is the fifth film by the Malian director Souleymane Cissé to make its debut at Cannes. Following Finye (The Wind), selected for Un Certain Regard in 1982, Yeelen (Light), Jury Prize winner in 1987, Waati (Time) in Competition in 1995, and Min Ye… (Tell Me Who You Are…) presented as a Special Screening in 2009, the film-maker now gives us Oka. O Ka (“Our House” in Bambara) is the home of the Bamako artist that binds him to his parents, his story and his memories.
“It is a saga, the saga of the Cissés […] a polyphonic autobiography” suggests Serge Toubiana, Cinémathèque Française director. “The film traces back several generations, covers all eras“. The voices we hear are those of Souleymane Cissé and his close family members, of the generations gone before, of the father who took care of his children’s education, of the four sisters forced by the police to leave their childhood home in 2008. It is for them that Oka is dedicated to women.
Film still © RR
Through the character of the small boy and images of nature, its animals and plants – “a theme that runs through Souleyman’s Cissés films” as the scriptwriter Thomas Vallon points out – the director casts a tender look back at his childhood in Bozola, a poor, lively district of Bamako. But his perspective, Thomas Vallon adds, also reveals that “Mali is yet another house, an endangered one, too” and “that fate sets itself against [the Soninke people], [that] justice and truth [are] threatened by uncontrollable forces“.
With this feature film, the eminent director situates his drama in the country of his ancestors, a majestically portrayed Mali that he watched plunge into war, powerless to act. Yet the message of hope is there: realising the value of education and the strength of love can bring about radical change.
Charlotte Pavard
SCREENING
Thursday 21 May / Soixantième Theatre / 7.15 pm
