The French/Senegalese co-production Mossane, the third feature by Senegalese director Safi Faye, has taken a long time to reach the screens. The entire film wrapped in 1990, but disagreements with the French co-producer led to a court case, and Faye was not free to take it into post-production until the beginning of the year. The final cut receives its world premiere in Un Certain Regard today.
Born in Dakar, Faye went to Paris to study film and ethnology, gaining her doctorate for the latter in 1979. She made her first film, La passante, a short, in 1972, and decided to devote her career to exploring the culture and problems of the African subcontinent.
From her total of 14 films, two previous features were chosen to do the festival fandango: in 1975, Kaddu Beykat (A Letter from the Country) won the Georges Sadoul Award, before being included in the Berlinale Forum the following year; and Fad, jal was selected for Un Certan Regard at Cannes in 1979.
Launched as a Senegalese-French co-production, Mossane is the story of 'The Pearl of Mbissel' - Mossane, a 14-year-old girl of exquisite beauty - who lives in a village near the coast, 100 kilometres south of Dakar. Promised in marriage to an emigrant living abroad and carrying on a chaste but secret love affair with Fara, Mossane embodies purity; unfortunately for her, her allure is such that no one can resist her, not even her brother Ngor who is tormented by incestuous thoughts and dreams.
It's an impossible situation, and one from which the heroine quite sensibly decides to escape. Mossane's flight into the arms of Fara takes her through mamangueth, the arm of the sea and the only one who can deliver her from evil…
"Mossane is to embody the dramatic cycle which regularly strikes the region," ends Safi enigmatically. "So if only mamangueth could speak out, it would say what it knows, warning her and delivering her from all evil."
Jørn Rossing Jensen
Prod Co: Muss Cinematographie, La Sept Cinema
Dir/Scr: Safi Faye
Ph: Jürgen Jurges
Art dir: Assane Ndoye
Music: Yande Codou Sene
Editor: Andrée Davanture
Cast: Magou Seck, Isseu Niang, Mustapha Yade
Running time: 105mins
International sales: Atriascop
