EXCLUSIVE: After clinching the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2019 together with her debut fiction function Atlantics, French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop had one burning need.
“My dream was to arrange a movie college in Dakar,” she tells Deadline.
Diop made historical past that 12 months in Cannes as the primary Black girl to compete within the competition’s official competitors. She clocked an identical milestone in February when she turned the primary Black filmmaker to win Berlin’s Golden Bear with the creative documentary Dahomey.
Borrowing its title from the traditional West African kingdom of Dahomey, situated within the south of at the moment’s Republic of Benin, the doc opens in November 2021 as twenty-six royal treasures from the previous Kingdom are about to depart Paris to return to their nation of origin. Together with hundreds of others, the artifacts had been plundered by French colonial troops in 1892.
Dahomey is Diop’s second function mission and the primary from Fanta Sy, the Dakar-based manufacturing home she quietly launched earlier this 12 months together with her inventive companion Fabacary Assymby Coly, a Senegalese business veteran. The corporate is the results of Diop’s preliminary movie college ambitions.
Fabacary Assymby Coly and Mati Diop with their ‘Dahomey’ producers Eve Robin and Judith Lou Lévy (Picture by Andreas Rentz/Getty Pictures).
“The thought can be to make use of my community to assist the movies we assist be proven in festivals and distributed around the globe,” she says.
Little or no info has been revealed concerning the firm and its technique — till now. Beneath, Diop and Coly converse with us about why they determined to launch Fanta Sy, the corporate’s targets, the tasks they’re enthusiastic about making, and the way they plan to assist a brand new technology of “daring” African tales.
DEADLINE: The title Fanta Sy. What does it imply and why did you select it?
MATI DIOP: I selected the title the identical manner I often discover the title of a movie. A title ought to announce the colour and evoke a narrative. Fanta Sy has many inspirations. First, it’s a nod to “Anna Sanders Movies,” the primary producers who trusted and supported me after I made my first quick movie in Dakar (Atlantics, 2009). Fanta Sy additionally comes from an African title I’m significantly keen on: “Fanta,” made world-famous by Alpha Blondy’s magnificent 80s music “Fanta Diallo.” Fanta can be the primary title of one of many characters in Atlantique. I’m guessing the surname “Sy” rings a bell. It’s humorous to assume it is usually the title of probably the most in style French actors, although it’s sometimes West African. Fanta Sy can be “Fantasy,” which suggests a selected sensitivity to style. Whether or not actual or fictional, we’d prefer to encourage movies that carry a imaginative and prescient and assume a proper ambition.
DEADLINE: Mati and Fabacary, how did you first meet?
FABACARY ASSYMBY COLY: I can’t bear in mind. Lol
DIOP: Me neither, which most likely means we’ve been working collectively for a very long time. Our first collaboration dates again to 2012 when Fabacary and I managed all the preparation of my movie Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns) collectively. As the author and director, I used to be very a lot concerned within the manufacturing. Fabacary held a number of positions: manufacturing supervisor and assistant director. Our collaboration labored properly and was fluid.
DEADLINE: And the place did you get the thought of establishing a manufacturing firm?
COLY: After Atlantics received the Cannes Prize in 2019, Mati expressed the need to share her expertise and assist younger Senegalese and, extra broadly, African authors. I used to be already doing this in Senegal however in a really casual manner. We began fascinated about it and got here up with the thought of establishing an organization to hold out our ambitions.
DIOP: Initially, my dream was to arrange a movie college in Dakar. This need got here from the identical place as my intention to interact my cinema on this territory, which I’ve been doing since 2008 and to which I’ve devoted all my time to date. Making movies, founding a college, and establishing an organization will not be the identical factor, however so far as I’m involved, all of it stems from the identical need to move on the message. The thought can be to make use of my community to assist the movies we assist be proven in festivals and distributed around the globe. After Atlantics, the place Fabacary served as a creative collaborator, I started to see him as a possible producer of my subsequent movies in Senegal. I additionally determined to turn out to be a co-producer on my movies.
DEADLINE: Fabacary, folks will know Mati extra internationally due to her work. What’s your background and the way did you find yourself right here?
COLY: After finishing an audiovisual coaching course in Dakar in 1998, I took a number of workshops in taking pictures, directing, and scriptwriting. For the previous twenty years, along with directing my very own movies (3), I’ve labored with a number of authors on their tasks as cinematographer, 1st assistant director, manufacturing supervisor, and producer.
DIOP: I just like the story our totally different backgrounds inform. Fabacary is a key participant in Senegalese cinema, embodying native know-how. I embody one other actuality of Senegalese cinema, which has succeeded in establishing itself on the world stage. This proves to younger people who movies conceived and shot domestically can exist, in their very own language, and have legitimacy on this world.
DEADLINE: Is the corporate based mostly in Dakar?
DIOP: Completely.
DEADLINE: What are the corporate’s aims? What tasks would you want to hold out?
COLY: The purpose is to establish younger authors by means of writing workshops, and to assist them within the making of their movies.
DEADLINE: Mati, in an Instagram put up, you stated that the corporate will purpose to focus on “the emergence of recent filmic writing” from the African continent. What does that imply?
DIOP: Meaning considering exterior the field, reinventing ourselves, and daring to discover new horizons. Above all, the thought is to hearken to the individuality of every particular person we work with and to encourage them to forge their very own imaginative and prescient.
DEADLINE: What sort of partnerships do you hope to develop as an organization? Each on the continent and elsewhere.
COLY: The kind of partnership we’re in search of is at the start monetary and technical assist from the Senegalese authorities and organizations that assist the movie business so we may give the very best assist to the authors we develop.
DIOP: After all, we’re additionally contemplating worldwide co-productions, as we did on Dahomey with France and Benin.
DEADLINE: What are you not enthusiastic about doing?
DIOP: I’m not enthusiastic about producing a movie in Senegal that tells our tales, however is shot in French or English, with out an African predominant solid. That’s my pink line.
What developments are you noticing on the continent for the time being?
COLY:: In Africa, we’re seeing increasingly daring tales – political, social, fantastical – which might be wildly creative, and for documentaries, they’re typically informed within the first particular person. We’re seeing increasingly authors documenting historical past and depicting actuality with an aesthetic that’s refined and assertive.