Cannes 2015: Where Is Africa?

We’re reading everywhere that Africa will be almost absent at this year’s edition of Cannes. But which Africa do we mean?

With the last-minute addition of Lamb (2015, Ethiopia), by the Ethiopian filmmaker Yared Zeleke in the official selection of Un Certain Regard, African cinemas are present in the most prestigious international competition, the event where the largest concentrations of journalists worldwide assemble for a film festival.

The anxiety was this: the continent’s absence, its invisibility, and also its rejection—the lack of recognition of its value.

Herein lies the point of contention. Until Mahamat Saleh-Haroun’s Un Homme qui crie / A Screaming Man (2010, Chad) was awarded the jury prize in 2010, Sub-Saharan African filmmakers had been absent from official competition for thirteen years, despite being represented almost every previous year. During this time North African filmmakers were not present either, except for Rachid Bouchareb with Indigènes / Days of Glory (France) in 2006 (whose main actors won a collective award for Best Actor) and Hors la loi / Outside the Law (dir. Rachid Bouchareb, France) in 2010. Since then African filmmakers have been present. However, gone are the days when the French Minister of Foreign Affairs pressured the festival to include films that were financed by the Ministry in competition. Why, moreover, should a program that aims for excellence, be obliged to represent all five continents if none of the continents produces a film that supersedes the rest? Especially since the Official Selection assembles a large group of established cineastes (with a few exceptions), whereas A Certain Regard welcomes up-and-coming directors. The secret of Cannes’s program, and its enduring success, is that the selected films maintain a balance between demanding auteur films like Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2010 Golden Palm winner Loong Boonmee raleuk chat / Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand), and others that bet everything on cinema’s magic power over a more general audience. The selection committee is also equally attentive to choosing films from the most diverse number of countries—without overrepresenting one over another—especially in the case of French films. The creation of Un Certain Regard in 1978 allowed more daring and original films and lesser-known auteur films to be shown. In 1962 the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics created International Critics’ Week, which was reserved for first and second films. The French Directors Guild established the Directors’ Fortnight in 1969, and later ACID (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema) started their own program [in 1993]. Thanks to these associations, a large number of films that normally would not receive as much attention have a showcase at Cannes—which does not necessarily imply that they have greater visibility overall.

The relative absence of Africa at Cannes corresponds to an ongoing crisis (due to the reduction of international funding) in African auteur cinema. Currently African films increasingly rely on digital equipment, but their low budgets and filmmakers’ lack of formal training mean that these productions are geared toward a local audience. Thus, very few of these filmmakers make their mark on the international scene.

Nonetheless, every choice brings frustrations, and at times resentment. Every year has its hard feelings or misunderstandings reinforced by the awards: the selection committee is called misogynist (not enough films by women), too intellectual (too many auteur films), or ethnocentric (not enough films from the global South). Of course we are most interested in this last point. Due to too much competition or lack of recognition some great films have not been accepted or were only shown at less popular special screenings which are out of competition. Such was the case of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006, Mali), which had a successful theatrical release (195,444 tickets sold in France in 2006). Although his Timbuktu (2014, Mali) did not win any prizes in competition at Cannes in 2014, he got his revenge winning seven Cesars, and at last count, the film had sold 1.2 million tickets in France, breaking the record for African film held by Youssef Chahine...