Not many directors from Africa have received the critical and international respect and prestige Abderrahmane Sissako has enjoyed over the years. In a career spanning more than 30 years, the Mauritanian artist and storyteller presented stories from Africa that surpassed the geography and language, and engaged with identity politics, extremism, and globalisation.
This year, he returned to the Berlin International Film Festival (15-25 February) to present his much-anticipated Berlinale competition film Black Tea.
A romance drama, Black Tea – starring Nina Melo and Chang Han – tells the story of Aya (Melo), who abandons her groom in Cote d’Ivoire on her wedding day for a new life in China, settling in Guangzhou, in the African Diaspora community. She meets and quietly falls in love with Cai (Han), an older Chinese man who hires her in his tea shop.
Black Tea might not win the prize in Berlin but it is already a success, having been bought by major distributors across the world; Caramel (Spain), Another World Entertainment (Norway), Mozinet (Hungary), Pandora Films (Germany, Austria), New Cinema (Israel), and many others.
Sissako and the three ‘M’ effect
At the Berlinale, The Africa Report attended a fully booked masterclass as part of the Berlinale Talents talks this year, where Sissako was invited to reflect on his career and influences.
For Sissako, three places start with the letter M that shaped his life and career: Mali, Mauritania, and Moscow. He was born in 1961 in Mauritania, and lived most of his life in Mali, before heading to Moscow to study filmmaking at the State Film Institute in 1983.
Now regarded as one of the godfathers of African cinema, Sissako remains humble about his beginnings and passion for cinema. Unlike many directors, he did not share a moving story of him escaping school to go to film or sneaking into a screening.
He asserts he was never a cinephile — someone fond of the cinema — or known for going to the movies. He has made peace with the fact that his passion grew out of personal reasons, maybe too personal.
“I became a filmmaker because of my love for my mother, who had another son named Cherif. She never got to see him growing up, but met him finally when he was 25. He was a student of film studies. I was still eight. I felt like I wanted to grow and become like Cherif, the son she never got to raise,” Sissako said.
Moscow was a Mecca for many filmmakers from Africa such as Sudanese director Suliman Elnour and the late Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene. Amid the peak of division in the Cold War, the Soviet Union was seen both as an anti-colonial destination — as opposed to western Europe, especially France — and anti-capitalist entity — as opposed to the United States.
Graduating in 1989, he made October (1993) and the documentary Rostov-Luanda (1998) which investigates the connections between Africa and the world through personal relationships.
While October tells the story of racial division through the relationship between African visiting student Idrissa and his white Russian partner Erina, Rostov-Luanda tells two stories, both of which travel between present-day Angola and Mauritania, to Mali and then to the former Soviet Union.
The intertwinement of different histories, languages, and — very important to Sissako —the complexities of the protagonists, which resulted in an unobtrusive, languid documentary.
“Being a geographical nomad is something different from being an artistic nomad,” Sissako said. “A true artistic nomad is leaving without physical leaving. This is what interests me; moving without really moving. It is about curiosity and searching for encounters regardless of the language,” he said.
Blossoming fame
Sissako’s fame blossomed in 2002, when his film Waiting for Happiness premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and won the Foreign Cineaste of the Year Award as well as the FIPRESCI Prize.
“It was my first feature film. I was part of this project which is part of Cannes, and has brought me to the landscape of the French film scene,” he said.
For Sissako, Waiting for Happiness addressed politics but through stories about exile and fragile hope, and identity crisis. But in his punchy Bamako (2006), politics was overwhelming.
I wanted to show a face of Africa that you don’t often see
“As a filmmaker, I want cinema to be political. Obviously I do not claim to have the truth but it [politics] is what matters to me and it is what I want to do with film,” he said.
Sissako’s strong interest in politics started as far back as his youth days when he started reading works by African authors based both in Africa and in the diaspora. “I read [Frantz] Fanon and others who used to struggle with words and talk about injustice through writing,” Sissako said.
“These were very strong inspirations who contributed to my spirituality and philosophy and my understanding of injustice, especially because I wanted to become on the side of justice since I was born in Africa,” he said.
Sissako’s Bamako is very politically blunt, as he “intentionally put the IMF and the World Bank on trial”, because “these institutions dominate the world and claim to be good forces for the world but ultimately they have been terrible and controversial in Africa and Latin America”.
In the film, Sissako dives in dense symbolism – as a trial is held in a backyard — featuring real life lawyers William Bourdon of France and Aïssata Tall Sall (Senegal’s current justice minister) as the people of the Bamako are contending the corruption and the individual nations’ mismanagement which have resulted in poverty-stricken conditions.
“I made up a situation and gave people the floor,” he said about the court-room drama in the film.
Back to Black Tea
Sissako’s reputation as an artistic nomad comes to light one way or the other in all his films. In Black Tea, the two worlds he explores are eager to meet and are doomed not to. He pits the traumatised and emotionally thirsty African diaspora against the anxious and lonely Chinese modern society. As he simply put it, “the two rivers never meet”.
The film provides a take on xenophobia in Chinese society especially from the upper and middle class, as opposed to the working class who interact directly with immigrants of African origins.
“The film is not particularly about Africa. Geography can be sometimes rather reductive in cinema. I wanted to show a face of Africa that you don’t often see; Africa as a region from which people migrate not necessarily for economic reasons but also to be free and to be loved,” Sissako told the Berlinale audience.
![74th Berlinale International Film Festival © Cast members Nina Melo and Han Chang pose with Director Abderrahmane Sissako as they attend a photocall to promote the movie ‘Black Tea’ at the 74th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin, Germany, February 21, 2024. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner](https://prod.cdn-medias.theafricareport.com/cdn-cgi/image/q=auto,f=auto,metadata=none,width=728,fit=cover/https://prod.cdn-medias.theafricareport.com/medias/2024/02/28/rtsw0mmx.jpg)
The film was not well received in the Western media and film industry magazines. While the storytelling might not be conventional, it leaves more space for imagination, and opens many doors that are worth admiration, mainly the portrayal of the African diaspora in China and the complexity of human interaction in this part of the world.
The veteran director said that he does not think in terms of international markets when he makes films. “I just think I want to be sincere. The aim of cinema is to create emotions. Identities are not about dividing people. Identities make us richer and the same goes for cinema.”
Sissako’s advice to young and potential African filmmakers? “Trust yourself. This is difficult in practice, [but] it is essential. Doubts are ok. Art is not science. Doubt allows us to be humble, to work and to interact with coworkers,” he said.
He also paid tribute to Sudan and showed solidarity with the Sudanese people as they suffer as a result of ongoing the bloody war. For Sissako, Sudan is where African cinema started.
“There is a war that is tearing the country apart. We have to talk about this tragedy. I notice there is a double standard that we do not hear about the war in Sudan, but we hear a lot about other conflicts …,” Sissako told the audience.
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