Image of resilience: Africa’s premiere movie fest returns to Burkina Faso’s capital

**The weeklong FESPACO that opens Saturday (Feb. 25) in Burkina Faso’s capital goes past leisure and seeks to additionally provide hope, and an emblem of endurance: In years of political strife and Islamic extremist assaults, which killed hundreds and displaced practically 2 million within the West African nation, it is by no means been cancelled.
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“We solely have FESPACO left to forestall us from fascinated about what’s occurring,” stated Maimouna Ndiaye, a Burkinabe actress who has 4 submissions on this 12 months’s competitors. “That is the occasion that should not be canceled irrespective of the state of affairs.”

For the reason that final version of the biennial competition in Ouagadougou, the nation’s troubles have elevated. Successive governments’ failures to cease the extremist violence triggered two navy coups final 12 months, with every junta chief promising safety.

At the very least 70 troopers have been killed in two assaults earlier this month in Burkina Faso’s Sahel area. The preventing additionally has sowed discord amongst a once-peaceful inhabitants, pitting communities and ethnicities in opposition to one another.

100 movies chosen

However, greater than 15,000 folks, together with cinema celebrities from Nigeria, Senegal and Ivory Coast are anticipated in Ouagadougou for FESPACO, Africa’s greatest movie competition that was launched in 1969.

Some 1,300 movies have been submitted for consideration and 100 have been chosen to compete from 35 African international locations and the diaspora, together with motion pictures from Dominican Republic and Haiti. Practically half of these within the fiction competitors this 12 months are directed by ladies.

Amongst them is Burkinabe director and producer Apolline Traore, whose movie “Sira” — thought-about a front-runner on this 12 months’s competitors — is emblematic of many Burkinabes’ struggling. It tells the story of a lady’s wrestle for survival after being kidnapped by jihadis within the Sahel, as her fiancé tries to search out her.

Nonetheless, Traore is upbeat about her nation’s prospects.

“The world has painted Burkina Faso as a pink nation. It is harmful to come back to my nation, as they are saying,” she instructed The Related Press. “We’re most likely slightly crumbled however we’re not down.”

Authorities officers say they’ve ramped up safety and can guarantee the security of competition attendees.

Many hope FESPACO will assist enhance home unity and strengthen ties with different international locations.

Wolfram Vetter, the European Union ambassador in Burkina Faso, known as the movie competition “an essential contribution to peace and reconciliation in Burkina Faso and past.”

The EU is the occasion’s largest funder after the Burkinabe authorities, and has contributed roughly 250,000 euros ($265,000).