Banel and Adama is a great romance, a West African dreamscape, a tragic fable, 
and a feminist paean. Young, fiery Banel loves her 
soft-hearted husband Adama with singular passion. She also hates to do chores with other village women, slings stones at small creatures, and fantasizes a liberated life of cattle-herding outside the village in the dunes. Adama is next in line for village chief but resists the responsibility. When a catastrophic drought 
hits, the curse weighs on his sense of duty, and the chasm between them drives Banel into a feverish, mystical chaos. Senegal’s official submission to the 2024 Oscars®, BANEL & ADAMA was the only debut feature in Cannes’ Official Competition in 2023, and marked Sy as just the second Black woman to compete for the Palme d’Or, after her French-Senegalese compatriot Mati Diop (Atlantics), in the festival’s 76-year history. Director and writer Ramata-Toulaye Sy joins us for a conversation on her breathtaking feature film debut as well as her reaction to the success Banel and Adama enjoyed prior to its theatrical run including being tapped as Senegal’s Official Entry to the 96th Academy Awards.
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2023 Cannes Film Festival
2023 Toronto International Film Festival
2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam
Senegal’s Official Entry to the 96th Academy Awards
About the filmmaker – French-Senegalese writer and director Ramata-Toulaye Sy was born and raised in Paris. She joined La Fémis in 2011 in the Screenwriting department, from which she graduated in 2015.Ramata-Toulaye has worked, among others, as a screenwriter on the film Sibel (2018) by C. Zencirci and G. Giovanetti as well as on Our Lady of the Nile (2019) by A. Rahimi. In 2020, Ramata-Toulaye directed her first short film, Astel, selected in more than 80 festivals and pre-selected for the 2023 Césa r Awards.Banel & Adama, which premiered in Competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, is her debut feature film.
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“A dreamlike debut…a lyrical, languid fable.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety
“There is a sultry elusiveness to Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s debut feature…Is this a riff on ‘Romeo & Juliet,’ filtered through Senegalese village life? Or is it a sci-fi fable, with the mirage-like heat reflecting a slow descent into personal madness a la Lars von Trier’s Melancholia? BANEL & ADAMA is a striking debut that puts Sy on the map as a purveyor of deceptively gorgeous visions…” – Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire
“A promising debut for Sy, who combines an eye for arrestingly apocalyptic images…with skillful work with her non-professional cast…[including] a remarkable performance from [lead actress Khady] Mane, who conveys the mutinous, deluded anger in a young woman who would bend the world around her to her will if she could.” – Wendy Ide, Screen Daily
“The director’s vision is unequivocally beautiful. Sy paints breathtaking scenes with her camera, demonstrating a gorgeous way of seeing the world.” – Lovia Gyarke, The Hollywood Reporter
“A lyrical love story…feels like nothing so much as a West African spin on the free-form reveries of Terrence Malick. Visually distinctive and drenched in color: a bright yellow shirt, rich orange fabrics, the vivid blue of a river even as it falls into shadow…succinct and evocative.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap