Banel & Adama (Ramata-Toulaye Sy)
First features rarely appear in prestigious competition lineup of the Cannes Film Fest.
A recent example was Hungarian director László Nemes whose 2015 debut feature, Son of Saul, screened in the main competition where it won the Grand Prix (and later earned the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar).
In 2023, the exception of a debut in the main line was Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s dramatically slender, but impressively lyrical Senegalese desert romance, Banel & Adama.
The tale benefits from the performances of Khady Mane and Mamadou Diallo as star-crossed but often at-odds lovers.
Throughout this story of drought, dust and drudgery, the characters’ names, Banel and Adama, take on incantatory power that’s matched by the sun-blasted beauty of Sy’s visuals.
Those sights linger in the mind, even if the story — about a thwarted wife, a stubborn husband and a love that turns tragic— never achieves the heights or depths one expected from the director.
