OUAGADOUGOU: Few movies have been made regarding jihadism in African countries, and even fewer have focused on the difficulties of women at the hands of extremists.
However, a slew of films showcased in the African continent’s biggest movie festival could be a cinematic watershed.
“When people talk about terrorism, they do not talk much about women,” Apolline Traore, a director from Burkina Faso, which hosts the festival and has suffered grievously from extremism.
Traore’s feature-length “Sira,” which secured the Silver Stallion of Yennenga award in the FESPACO festival ended on Saturday, describes a 25-year-old woman abducted by jihadists who have to draw on courage and smartness to survive.
Traore said she wanted to take women out of the typical image of victimhood and present them in the “major role in the fight against the menace of terrorism.”
She said to be inspired by meeting women whose lives had been destroyed by jihadists.
She said one example was a woman who, with a bullet hit in her shoulder, had spent five days searching for shelter for herself and her two children.
A Burkinabe actress, Nafissatou Cisse, who plays the starring role of Sira, said she had drawn on the passion of women caught in the extremism nightmare.
Over 10,000 people have lost their lives in Burkina Faso since extremists swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015, and over two million people have fled their homes.
Insurgents control around 40 percent of the country.
Making “Sira” was in itself a grueling challenge.
Movies on extremism in African countries
After the Solhan massacre in June 2021, in which 132 people were killed — the bloodiest single assualt in the long-running extremism campaign — the authorities declined to renew authorization for filming “Sira” in Burkina’s deeply troubled north.
Another film director whose home country is struggling with extremism is Amina Mamani.
Her native Nigeria is the base of the Boko Haram movement, which started attacks in 2009 and metastasized to Cameroon, Niger, and Chad.
It leaped to global notoriety in 2014, when several schoolgirls were kidnapped in Chibok, in Borno state.
A short film by Mamani, “The Envoy of God,” narrates the story of a girl aged about ten who is kidnapped one night by extremists to use her to launch a suicide attack on a market. “Terrorists use women. Men get killed, women are kidnapped, forced into marriage, and raped, and young girls are selected to blow themselves up,” said Mamani.
Launched in 1969, the biennial Pan-African Television and Film Festival of Ouagadougou draws thousands of movie professionals and fans from across the continent.
It is also closely followed by the United States and European movie industries, which scout the festival for new films, ideas, and talent.
A total of 170 movies competed in this year’s festival, whose theme was “culture of peace and African cinema.”
Youssef Chebbi, a Tunisian director, won the top prize, the coveted Golden Stallion, for the murder mystery “Ashkal.”
Under the event rules, films chosen for competition have to be made by African people and predominantly produced in Africa.
