6:00PM

HYENAS

Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty

Year: 1992

Country: Senegal

Language: Wolof / English Subtitles

Run Time: 1hr 53min

Los Angeles Premiere of Digital Restoration

After being kicked out of her African village three decades earlier for getting pregnant out of wedlock, Linguere (Ami Diakhate) has returned home. While Linguere has done well for herself, her home village has fallen on hard economic times. Intent on punishing Dramaan (Mansour Diouf), the man who fathered her child but refused to own up to the act, Linguere makes a proposal: she will help the town financially, if the locals agree to execute Dramaan.

About the Filmmaker:

Djibril Diop Mambéty was a Senegalese film director, actor, orator, composer and poet. The auteur directed two feature films, which were made 19 years apart, Touki Bouki (1973) and Hyenas (1992). His five short films received international acclaim for their original, unconventional narrative style. Mambéty’s interest in cinema began with theater. Having graduated from acting school in Senegal, Mambéty worked as a stage actor at the Daniel Sorano National Theater in Dakar until he was expelled for disciplinary reasons. In 1969, at age 24, without any formal training in filmmaking, Mambéty directed and produced the short film, Contras’ City. His first feature-length film, Touki Bouki (1973), received the International Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Despite the film’s success, twenty years passed before Mambéty made another feature film. During this hiatus he made one short film in 1989, Parlons grand-mère. Hyenas (1992), Mambéty’s second and final feature film, was an adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit and was conceptualized as a continuation of Touki Bouki. At the time of his death, the film director had been working on a trilogy of short films called Contes des Petites Gens (Tales of the Little People). The first of the three films was Le Franc (1994). Mambéty had also been editing the second film of that series, The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, which premiered posthumously in 1999.

8:30PM

ATLANTIQUE

Director: Mati Diop

Year: 2019

Country: France, Senegal, Belgium

Language: Wolof / English Subtitles

Run Time: 1hr 44min

Los Angeles Advanced Screening.

Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar. Ada, 17, is in love with Souleiman, a young construction worker. But she has been promised to another man. One night, Souleiman and his co-workers leave the country by sea, in hope of a better future. Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding and a mysterious fever starts to spread. Little does Ada know that Souleiman has returned.

About the Filmmaker:

Mati Diop lives and works in Paris and is both a filmmaker and actress. While attending Le Fresnoy and Le Pavillon (Palais de Tokyo), she directed her first four short films. She is the niece of the great Senegalese film director Djibril Diop Mambéty, and made her film A Thousand Suns (2013) as an homage to his Touki Bouki. At Rotterdam, Diop has won the Tiger Award for Short Films twice: in 2010 for Atlantiques and in 2012 for Big in Vietnam. This year she debuted her feature-length film Atlantique at Cannes, becoming the first black woman director to be in contention for the Cannes Film Festival's highest prize, the Palme d'Or and winning the Cannes Grand Prix.