The Somali film "The Wife of the Grave" won the largest film festival in Africa

Ouagadougou, October 24 (EFE). The film “The Grave Digger’s Wife” by Somali director Ahmed Khader won the 27th edition of the Ouagadougou African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO), the largest film festival in Africa. In the capital of Burkina Faso, known for its significance as the “African Oscar”.

“Congratulations to Ahmed Khader from Somalia (actress of the night), Yennenga Golden Stallion 2021 (award name), as well as all the winners of this 27th edition of FESPACO,” Burkina Faso President Roch Kabore said today in your Twitter account.

“Thank you to all the directors who continue to broadcast our lives, dreams and hopes on screen,” he added.

Khader, 40, who also holds Finnish citizenship since moving to Finland with his family at the age of 16 as a refugee, was not present at the festival.

His winning film is about the love story of Guled and Nasra, a married couple who live with their son Mahed, in a suburb of Djibouti, one of the countries in the Horn of Africa, and have difficulty paying for an expensive operation. To treat Nasra’s chronic kidney disease, while her husband, Guled, works as a contractor to make ends meet.

The film, shot in Djibouti, was well-received last July at the Cannes Film Festival as part of International Critics’ Week.

The closing ceremony of this edition of FESPACO, which opened on October 17, was held last night with an awards ceremony where Haitian director Gessica Généus’ film Freda was awarded the Silver Stallion, and ‘A Story of Love and Desire’. Tunisian Leila Bouzid with the Bronze Stallion among other awards.

The event was chaired by the President of Burkina Faso and his Senegalese counterpart Macky Sall, where Senegal was the guest of honor this year and participated in 19 selected films and a delegation of 200 people.

At the ceremony, Kabore said he was “satisfied” with the “large participation of festival-goers and filmmakers”, in statements compiled today by the Burkina Faso Media Agency (AIB).

For his part, Sall explained that he is working with Kabore to create the Film Promotion Fund, an initiative worth 2,000 million CFA francs (about three million euros) that will come into effect in January 2022 in Senegal.

This edition of FESPACO, which opened eight months late due to the coronavirus, has been developed under the motto “Cinema from Africa and the Diaspora, New Perspectives, New Challenges”.

It was attended by 239 films produced on the continent and in the diaspora, selected from 1,132 films submitted from 52 African countries and from all over the world.

There are 17 films that have competed for the main prize of this biennial festival since 1969.

FESPACO is a stage that offers insight and connections for workers in the African film sector, who are still “underfunded” but “with great potential,” according to a report published at the beginning of October by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

According to the report, the African cinema and audiovisual sector generates $5,000 million (about 4,300 million euros), but it could reach $20 thousand million (more than 17,230 million euros). EFE

tcs-mrgz / amg