Film Forum

A great romance, a West African dreamscape, a tragic fable, a feminist paean. Young, fiery Banel loves her soft-hearted husband Adama with singular passion. She also hates to do chores with other village women, slings stones at small creatures, and fantasizes a liberated life of cattle-herding outside the village in the dunes. Adama is next in line for village chief but resists the responsibility. When a catastrophic drought hits, the curse weighs on his sense of duty, and the chasm between them drives Banel into a feverish, mystical chaos. Senegal’s official submission to the 2024 Oscars®, it was the only first feature in Cannes’s Official Competition in 2023.  

2023      87 MIN.     SENEGAL / FRANCE / MALI     KINO LORBER
IN PULAAR AND FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES    

Reviews

"A love story suffused in beauty and mystery, BANEL & ADAMA draws you in right from the start… The filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy illuminates this elliptical story, set in an unnamed Senegalese village, with daubs of strong colors and strikingly vivid imagery... Sy has a terrific eye and, working with her cinematographer Amine Berrada, she quickly hooks you with the beauty of Banel and Adama’s world, pulling you into their everyday life with hints of drama and myth, though mostly with the graceful compositions and the region’s natural riches, its green fields and blue skies...”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“A striking debut that puts Sy on the map as a purveyor of deceptively gorgeous visions.”  
– Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire

“A dreamlike debut…a lyrical, languid fable.”
– Jessica Kiang, Variety

“A promising debut for Sy, who combines an eye for arrestingly apocalyptic images…with skillful work with her non-professional cast…[including] a remarkable performance from [lead actress Khady] Mane, who conveys the mutinous, deluded anger in a young woman who would bend the world around her to her will if she could.”
– Wendy Ide, Screen Daily

“A lyrical love story…feels like nothing so much as a West African spin on the free-form reveries of Terrence Malick. Visually distinctive and drenched in color: a bright yellow shirt, rich orange fabrics, the vivid blue of a river even as it falls into shadow…succinct and evocative.”
– Steve Pond, The Wrap