Screening times:
Friday, June 14, 6:30 PM - Half-capacity screening
Saturday, June 15, 6:30 PM - Half-capacity screening
Ramata-Toulaye Sy | France, Mali, Senegal, Qatar | 2023 | 87m | Pulaar with English subtitles
with Khady Mane, Mamadou Diallo
Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. The young married couple lives in a remote village in northern Senegal. For them, nothing else exists except each other. But duty dictates that Adama soon accept the role of chief in their tight-knit village. The lovers have their own plans, to live on their own and carve their own path beyond tradition. A more modern way.
Then, something in the air changes. The rains do not come, the cattle begin to die, the men leave. The curse weighs on Adama's sense of duty and a schism grows between them. It drives Banel into a fever, chaotic and unpredictable, and darkens the couple's hopes for the future.
A rare debut feature that premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and Senegal's official submission to the 96th Academy Awards®, Banel & Adama is a lush and lyrical West African dreamscape, beautifully shot with an eye for the symmetry in the landscape and costume design. It's a tragic romance lashed with longing, set against a culture of myth as it places its protagonists' love on a collision course with their community’s traditions.
"Love blossoms and withers in a drought-stricken village in Ramata-Toulaye Sy's tragic, Shakespearean romance. It’s a powerful love story with a bruised heart." -Philip De Semlyen, Time Out
"A striking debut that puts Sy on the map as a purveyor of deceptively gorgeous visions that show flimsy desires at the mercy of the social, and literal, weather." -Sophie Monks Kaufman, Indiewire
"Banel & Adama is a distressingly searing love story that moves to its own rhythms, curiosities, impulses, and havoc for a shrewd picture of the heavy balance between loyalty to one’s community and devotion to each other." -Robert Daniels, OkayAfrica
Bright Horizons Award - 2023 Melbourne International Film Festival
Tickets $8.75 ($8 cash at the door if available).
Half capacity
Half capacity
