EXCLUSIVE: After clinching the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2019 together with her debut fiction characteristic Atlantics, French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop had one burning want.
“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 pageant’s official competitors. She clocked an analogous 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, positioned within the south of at this time’s Republic of Benin, the doc opens in November 2021 as twenty-six royal treasures from the previous Kingdom are about to go away Paris to return to their nation of origin. Together with hundreds of others, the artifacts have been plundered by French colonial troops in 1892.
Dahomey is Diop’s second characteristic challenge and the primary from Fanta Sy, the Dakar-based manufacturing home she quietly launched earlier this 12 months together with her artistic accomplice Fabacary Assymby Coly, a Senegalese trade 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 Photos).
“The concept can be to make use of my community to assist the movies we help be proven in festivals and distributed around the globe,” she says.
Little or no info has been printed in regards to 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 objectives, the initiatives they’re excited by making, and the way they plan to help a brand new era 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 method 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 once I made my first brief movie in Dakar (Atlantics, 2009). Fanta Sy additionally comes from an African title I’m notably keen on: “Fanta,” made world-famous by Alpha Blondy’s magnificent 80s track “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’s also the title of some of the standard French actors, although it’s usually West African. Fanta Sy can be “Fantasy,” which suggests a specific sensitivity to style. Whether or not actual or fictional, we’d wish 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 keep 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 the whole 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 nicely and was fluid.
DEADLINE: And the place did you get the concept of organising a manufacturing firm?
COLY: After Atlantics received the Cannes Prize in 2019, Mati expressed the need to share her expertise and help younger Senegalese and, extra broadly, African authors. I used to be already doing this in Senegal however in a really casual method. We began desirous about it and got here up with the concept of organising an organization to hold out our ambitions.
DIOP: Initially, my dream was to arrange a movie college in Dakar. This want 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 thus far. Making movies, founding a college, and organising an organization are usually not the identical factor, however so far as I’m involved, all of it stems from the identical want to cross on the message. The concept can be to make use of my community to assist the movies we help be proven in festivals and distributed around the globe. After Atlantics, the place Fabacary served as an inventive collaborator, I started to see him as a possible producer of my subsequent movies in Senegal. I additionally determined to turn into a co-producer on my movies.
DEADLINE: Fabacary, folks will know Mati extra internationally because of 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 capturing, 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 initiatives 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 those who movies conceived and shot regionally 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 targets? What initiatives would you want to hold out?
COLY: The intention is to establish younger authors by writing workshops, and to help them within the making of their movies.
DEADLINE: Mati, in an Instagram put up, you mentioned that the corporate will intention to focus on “the emergence of recent filmic writing” from the African continent. What does that imply?
DIOP: Which means considering outdoors the field, reinventing ourselves, and daring to discover new horizons. Above all, the concept is to hearken to the distinctiveness 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 first monetary and technical help from the Senegalese authorities and organizations that help the movie trade so we may give the very best help 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 excited by doing?
DIOP: I’m not excited by producing a movie in Senegal that tells our tales, however is shot in French or English, with out an African principal forged. That’s my pink line.
What traits are you noticing on the continent in the mean time?
COLY:: In Africa, we’re seeing increasingly daring tales – political, social, fantastical – which might be wildly creative, and for documentaries, they’re typically advised within the first particular person. We’re seeing increasingly authors documenting historical past and depicting actuality with an aesthetic that’s refined and assertive.
