Quartiers Lointains : Season 7
METAMORPHOSIS
How do we exist in societies that are at once ours and other? Struggle with institutions that are not always able to treat our ills? Find mystical or rational remedies to dress our wounds? These questions run through African diasporas. Because the transformations undergone in exile, in adapting to a new culture, in illness or in pain, are often minimised and little shown on screen. Staged through documentary, animated and fiction shorts, these physical and psychic metamorphoses are at the heart of Quartiers Lointains’ seventh season.
Our patron: Alice Diop
Screenwriter and director Alice Diop has filmed the invisible angles of French society for twenty years. For Vers la tendresse (#QL6) she received the César for Best Short Film 2017. The same year, her documentary feature La Permanence won the French competition prize at Cinéma du réel. Her documentary Nous was named Best Documentary and Best Film in the Encounters section at the 2021 Berlinale. Her feature Saint Omer, France’s Oscar entry in 2023, won the Silver Lion and the Lion of the Future at the Venice Film Festival as well as the Prix Louis Delluc and the Prix Jean Vigo 2022.
The films
Terre d’ombres by Fatima Kaci
Documentary - 2021 - / - 38 min
Synopsis
Set aside in the middle of an industrial zone in the suburbs, the Muslim cemetery of Bobigny, an islet that dates from the colonial era, mixes different worlds and different temporalities. Fatima Kaci went to meet the rituals, voices and presences of its visitors. From the weave of words and in the hollow of silences, fragments of a shared memory between France and Algeria emerge.
Biography
Fatima Kaci was born in 1992 in France to Algerian parents. She grew up in Saint-Denis in the Paris suburbs. Holder of a master’s in Valorisation des patrimoines cinématographiques at Université Paris 8, she then joined the directing department at La Fémis, where she made her first films. Her latest short, La voix des autres, selected for the Cinéfondation at the Cannes Film Festival 2023, won the Lights on Women Prize awarded by L'Oréal
Film career
Exclusive
On the Surface by Fan Sissoko
Animation - 2021 - / - 4 min
Synopsis
A young Black woman goes swimming in the Icelandic sea and reflects on raising a child in a country where one remains a stranger. Entering the icy water, she relives her periods of traumatic pregnancy and postnatal depression. Then her swimming becomes more fluid. Surrounded by nature, where she faces her fears, she can now tend her wounds.
Biography
Fan Sissoko is a French-Malian artist and filmmaker based in Reykjavik, with a background in design for social change. Her work explores themes of migration, motherhood, identity and neurodiversity. She is currently developing her next animated short-film project
Film career
Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2022 - Special Jury Mention; Tricky Women / Tricky Realities 2022; ‘On the Pulse’ Short Film Festival 2022; Movies that Matter Festival 2022; Scottish Mental Health Festival 2022 - Animation Award; Seattle International Film Festival 2022; Femfilm Festival 2022; FESCAAAL 2022; Festival Filministes 2022; Rex Animation Festival 2022; flatpackfestival 2022; Animation Nights New York 2022; Festival Fim Afrikin (FFA) 2022; Psarokokalo International Short Film Festival 2022; Animafest ZAGREB 2022; Détours en Cinecourt 2022; Leiden Shorts 2022; Nickel Independent Film Festival 2022; Figari International Film Festival 2022; Palm Springs International ShortFest 2022; Mostra de Cinemas Africanos 2022; Almagro International Film Festival 2022; dotdotdot 2022; Sao Paulo ISFF 2022; Mequinensa International Film Festival 2022 - Elba Film Festival 2022 - Honorable Mention; Quibdo African Film Festival 2022; Afrika Film Festival Köln 2022; Chacun fait son court 2022; Helsinki International Film Festival 2022; Nordisk Panorama Film Festival 2022; Le Chouette Festival 2022; Festival Court Derrière 2022 - Prix Elie; 9Ajyal Film Festival 2022; AZYL Shorts 2022; Cinemafrica Film Festival Sweden 2022; iAfrica Film Festival 2022; B3 Biennale 2022; Saint Paul Trois Châteaux 2022; La Toile des Palmistes 2022; African Movie Academy Awards nominee 2022; Leeds International Film Festival 2022; Cinemazero 2022; Seville European Film Festival 2022; UK Film Festival 2022; Amarcort Film Festival 2022; Rencontres cinématographiques de Sya 2022; FESTIC 2022 - Best Animated Film; Manipulate Festival 2023; Black Film Festival Zurich 2023; FESPACO 2023; Afrika Filmfestival 2023; Filmfest Dresden 2023; Tres Court International Film Festi
Bulles d’air by Daouda Diakhaté
Fiction - 2018 - / - 31 min
Synopsis
Omar, thirty, is leaving a long stay in a psychiatric hospital. He returns to the neighbourhood where he lives with his father and his little sister. The only thing that interests him is news of Ania, his ex-girlfriend
Biography
Of Franco-Senegalese origin, Daouda Diakhaté grew up in several working-class neighbourhoods in the Bordeaux suburbs. Out of school at 16, he became involved in community work in his neighbourhood and ran image-education and audiovisual-awareness workshops linked to the CNC’s “Passeur d’images” scheme. In 2009, Daouda created an association, “Nos Rêves Production”, to introduce as many people as possible to film and audiovisual trades. In parallel he began a career as a director and actor. In 2015, he directed the self-produced documentary Les portes de l'égalité, then in 2018 his first produced short film, Bulles d’air. His next short, Ayo Néné (2020), was pre-bought by Canal+. Daouda is currently developing his first fiction feature, Mbott (toad, in Wolof), winner of the Label Découverte at the Prix Sopadin du scénario 2023.
Film career
Festival Cinébanlieue 2018 -** Grand Prix + Best Actor for Mahamadou Coulibaly**; Poitiers Film Festival 2018; Aubagne International Film Festival March 2019 - Grand Prix for Best Original Score; Lille European Film Festival 2019; Cleveland International Film Festival 2019; Cannes Film Festival - Directors’ Fortnight - as part of the Cinébanlieue/Talents en court carte blanche 2019; Palm Springs International Film Festival - ShortFest 2019; Festival International de Contis 2019 - Prix des collégiens; Cleveland Film Festival 2019; Rhode Island Film Festival 2019; Fifib 2019 (out of competition); Rencontres cinématographiques de Brive 2019 (out of competition)
Anansi by Aude N'Guessan Forget
Fiction - 2022 - / - 20 min
Synopsis
Eden, an Afro hairdresser, tries to push through recurring stomach pain by toughing it out. Unheard by the medical profession, she attempts to treat herself. When the pain catches up with her, everyday life becomes unbearable
Biography
Aude first trained as an actor and took part in various projects as a performer. She appears alongside Agnès Soral and Vladimir Yordanoff in A dix minutes de nulle part, Alice Belaidi in Working girl, and Clotilde Coureau in La fête des mères. In 2017 she worked with women wishing to learn French through theatre, with the company Graine de soleil, and staged them at the Lavoir Moderne Parisien. At the same time, driven by a desire to write her own projects, Aude joined a screenwriting workshop at CIFAP in 2019. Soon after, she wrote her first series, Niabla, as a screenwriter for Canal+ Afrique, co-writing with Ivorian author Armand Gauz and Anthony Martin. Aude joined La Résidence at La Fémis in 2021 to train as a director.
Film career
Amiens International Film Festival 2022; Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2023 - Prix d’interprétation féminine
Audience feedback
Screening, French Institute of Alger #QL7
Screening, French Institute of Annaba #QL7
Screening, French Institute of Constantine #QL7
Screening, Luminor Hôtel de Ville #QL7
Screening, Comoedia de Lyon #QL7
Screening, Centre Paris Anim' Place des Fêtes #QL7
Screening, Retrospective Useen Nairobi
Screening, Festival Tous Courts
Screening at CinéMassy - high school Vilgenis
US TOUR : Maison Française de Washington D.C.
US TOUR : Georgetown University
US TOUR : Purchase College
US TOUR : French Institute Alliance Française
US TOUR : Maison Française de NYU
Season launch 7 Centre Pompidou