La Pirogue screened again at FNCC
La Pirogue a feature film directed by Moussa Toure will be screen at The FNCC on the 12 February 2014 at 18:30,the entrance fee is N$20.
After having premiered the film in Namibia in March 2013, AfricAvenir and the FNCC jointly decided to re-screen the film, due to the importance of the issue Toure addresses in his film.
Amongst many other prizes, the film won the Bronze Stallion at the Pan-African Film & TV Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) in 2013.
On Wednesday, 12. February 2014, 18h30
At the FNCC, Entry costs N$ 20. The screening is supported by Institute Francaise.
Synopsis:
“La Pirogue” tells the story of Baye Laye (Souleymane Seye Ndiaye), a boat captain who hails from a fishing village outside Dakar. It follows his ordeal after he agrees to take a pirogue containing 30 men to Spain’s Canary Islands in search of a better life in Europe. Capably directed by Moussa Touré, a sometime politician and bittersweet chronicler of his country’s social woes in several previous dramas and documentaries, this Un Certain Regard entry at Cannes is dedicated to the 5000 or so Africans who have died trying to cross to Europe in the last decade. Baye Laye is an experienced fisherman and family man who is being forced by economic and moral pressures to reluctantly captain a refugee boat for a Dakar-based people-smuggling operation. After some tense negotiation, Baye Laye and his human cargo of around 30 souls set out from Senegal in a mood of strained optimism. Predictably, their crossing soon becomes a nightmarish ordeal.
A female stowaway (Mame Astou Diallo) causes friction among the otherwise all-male group, while minor tensions simmer across ethnic and religious divisions. Passengers sicken and die, others are washed overboard in storms. A harrowing encounter with another pirogue, floating on the high seas without food or power, becomes an ominous portent. Soon Laye’s boat itself suffers a similar fate, its engines shutting down, its course pulled out into the mid Atlantic by powerful ocean currents. The vessel begins to drift – and so, alas, does the plot.Handsomely shot in fairly conventional style by a mixed Senegalese and French crew, La Pirogue is a well-crafted melodrama in classic issue-movie mold. The cast members are capable, the dramatic conflict punchy, and the soundtrack sprinkled with the pretty, sinewy, laidback sounds of Senegal, a nation famous for its vibrant music scene.
