Senegalese movie trade seeing notable evolution

Standing in a barren schoolyard surrounded by baobab timber on the finish of a dusty street in central Senegal, Leila Sy takes a go searching and smiles.

“The sunshine makes all of the distinction,” she says. “All the things is gorgeous — the color, the individuals, the power.”

The movie director is capturing “Banlieusard 2”, the sequel to a 2019 French hit starring French rapper Kery James.

The film is scheduled for launch on Netflix later this yr.

The American streaming large is making its mark in francophone West Africa, a part of a broader surge in audiovisual manufacturing within the area following years of sluggishness.

Outdoors Nollywood in anglophone Nigeria, manufacturing has been rising quick, pushed by Senegal and Ivory Coast.

On the “Banlieusard 2” set, it’s the final day of filming. The forged and crew are drained — and prepared for a hearty lunch of yassa rooster, a conventional Senegalese dish.

“The groups are there, the talents are there, Senegal is within the technique of repositioning itself on this ecosystem and presents a risk to worldwide producers to return and develop tasks with out worries”, mentioned Ousmane Fall, a co-producer on the image.

– Cleaning soap operas –

In a cramped room of a medical clinic in Senegal’s capital Dakar, a smaller however equally motivated crew is busy ending filming an episode of the tv sequence “Karma”, broadcast domestically on the TFM channel.

The entire crew discovered the commerce on the job.

Souleymane Camara, 29, an actor within the sequence, works for Marodi, a significant regional manufacturing firm.

Launched in 2015, the corporate — which produced the hit sequence “Mistress of a Married Man” — has gained greater than 4.8 million subscribers on YouTube and claims to have greater than 20 million views every month.

Its enterprise mannequin relies on native content material and promoting spots that generate hundreds of thousands of views.

Fifty-six p.c of its viewers are ladies, and 70 p.c are aged 18 to 34.

Marodi’s partnerships with Senegalese TV channels and worldwide distributors akin to Canal+ and Amazon Prime have boosted its visibility.

“Marodi’s ambition is to be a content material producer for all of Africa and the diaspora,” Julia Cabrita Diatta, its gross sales and advertising and marketing director, advised AFP.

At this time, 60 p.c of its shoppers are in Senegal, 20 p.c are elsewhere in Africa and eight p.c are in France, she mentioned.

“In French-speaking Africa, we’re seeing a take-off in amount manufacturing, pushed by Senegal and Ivory Coast, and budgets which have elevated enormously”, mentioned Pierre Barrot, audiovisual program supervisor on the Worldwide Group of La Francophonie (OIF).

Between 1992 and 2017, there have been solely a dozen 52-minute episodes of TV sequence made in francophone Africa, in keeping with the OIF.

However that rocketed to round 100 episodes between 2018 and 2022, pushed primarily by Canal+ and TV5 Monde, which distribute the reveals regionally.

Nonetheless, the 52-minute format stays much less standard than the traditional 26 minutes, which are inclined to fall into the class of police comedies or sitcoms with family-related themes — typically the polygamy/adultery-inheritance-witchcraft triptych, Barrot mentioned.

– New wave –

Not like Nigeria, French-speaking Africa produces only a few feature-length movies for TV, and few movies for cinematic launch.

Final yr, “Les Trois Lascars” (The Three Lascars) by Burkinabe director Boubakar Diallo grew to become essentially the most profitable cinema launch from francophone Africa thus far this century.

It notched up 56,652 paid admissions throughout 12 international locations — an encouraging tally, however a pale shadow of the Nineties, when the area’s high field workplace hit drew half 1,000,000 cinema-goers.

That was earlier than the cinemas throughout French-speaking Africa went into headlong decline, and most of them closed.

At this time, although, cinemas are coming again and this might immediate an uptick in native manufacturing of comedies, Barrot mentioned.

A brand new technology of audiovisual makers can be rising to fulfill demand.

The French faculty Kourtrajme opened in Dakar in 2022 to coach screenwriters and administrators.

Its college students seem assured concerning the future and the have to be multi-skilled and adaptable.

“We have by no means had so many sequence, and shortly, it’s going to go even additional,” mentioned Kenza Madeira, 23, who needs to develop into each an actor and a director.

“Personally, I am very optimistic — a number of alternatives are coming.”