Sira is an unusual film and wasn’t quite what I expected. As my viewing colleague noted, the ‘content’ of the film, i.e. the events in the real world in the troubled region of the Sahel, centred on Northern Mali but spreading into other territories, could not be more important and unfortunately are not covered in mainstream Western media to any extent. At the same time, the film itself – probably for very good reasons – is something of a mix of mainstream genre elements and regional cultural elements in the form of a multinational production. This is understood by the writer-director Apolline Traoré who places an onscreen title “Somewhere in the Sahel” on the opening image of a desert scene in which a caravan of nomads moves into the frame. The location for the shoot was in Mauritania rather than Burkina Faso, the base for Ms Traoré, precisely because it was too dangerous to shoot in either Burkina Faso or Mali. It seems that in 2023 jihadist groups are active in many countries in the region, including Benin and Niger. The director moved to the US when she was 17 for her further education and training and returned to Burkina Faso in 2005. She agrees that the film does give the feel of a thriller and that she thinks about films in genre terms. My colleague said he thought the film was like an African Western and I remembered the spoof spaghetti Western that appears on the local TV channel in Abderrahmane Sissako’s political satire Bamako (Mali-France 2006) – with Danny Glover playing a cowboy.
The caravan in Sira is revealed to comprise a group of Fulani nomads. There are Fulani peoples across all of the Sahel and they are the largest pastoralist nomadic community in the world. The caravan is small with just a few families and when they are surprised by two Toyota pick-ups carrying armed men, an uneven conflict breaks out. The Fulani men are shot dead without warning and the one woman who fights back is taken by what we assume to be a jihadist group. Later she is abandoned after being assaulted. This is Sira, who must now fend for herself far from her family and her husband-to-be (who is in the distant village which is the caravan’s destination). Sira is tough and resourceful and eventually finds the jihadist camp. She hides in the rocks a short distance away and ventures out at night to steal water and food. Meanwhile her fiancé, Jean-Sidi sets out to find her. He is from a Christian family embedded in the Muslim Fulani community. Unfortunately, although he may be tall and handsome, he seems pretty inept at finding his woman. Nevertheless his quest is one of the narrative enigmas. The more important ones are will Sira survive and not get captured again and what exactly is this jihadist cell hoping to achieve? I won’t spoil the narrative in the hope that the film will get into international distribution and you will have the chance to see it.
Cineuropa’s review of the film argues that Traoré’s approach is successful in keeping the the narrative at the level of universal fears and emotions and that the audience doesn’t need to know the details to enjoy the film – this will aid its potential for wide distribution. This is a persuasive argument. But personally, I much prefer to have the local details and to find out about the cultural/political points. Because of this I have looked around for other similar films. Timbuktu (Mali 2014) is arguably the best complementary text. One immediate point of contact between the two films is that in both, some of the jihadists discuss players in the European Champions League. In Sira they mention Sadio Mané, the Senegalese player who became a big star with Liverpool. This kind of ‘banter’ helps to humanise the young men who have been drawn to join the jihadist groups. Timbuktu is another Abderrahmane Sissako film. I imagine Apolline Traoré has seen his two Mali-Mauritania films? The big difference between the two directors is that Sissako trained in Moscow and is one of the last of the original wave of West African directors producing films with support from France. However, the younger Traoré is reported to have worked with Idrissa Ouedraogo (1954-2018), another of the original wave of directors whose late 1980s/1990s films were widely distributed in France.
The international nature of the production is most obvious in relation to language. My limited knowledge of the languages of the region suggests that ‘Fula’, the Fulani language might be known by many people across the Sahel, but what of the jihadists? They will have recruited in local villages but also other territories and the influence of Algerians and other Arabic speakers might introduce Arabic and French. The Sahel covers mainly what was ‘Francophone West Africa’ and the French encouraged French medium schools. Has that still been the case in the last twenty or thirty years? Many characters in Sira speak what seems to my admittedly non-expert ears to be very good French. Some also speak English and Sira herself appears to understand French and English as well as Fula. There is a group of young Hausa women from Northern Nigeria brought into the jihadi camp as sex slaves. Sira at one point communicates with them in English. Just as important as language are skin tones. Traoré was determined to find a dark-skinned Burkinabe woman to play Sira and after many auditions she found the astonishing Nafisatou Cissé. I think it is her first role and she is very good indeed, especially given the difficult scenarios and physical actions she is asked to carry out. The experienced actors in the cast seem to have come from a wide range of diaspora communities.
Overall, director Traoré succeeds in taking an important issue of jihadism and its impact in the Sahel and making a popular genre picture in which a woman is able to deny ‘victimhood’ and win her own battles. It is exciting if not always plausible. The director sets out her aims in this interview from Africa News. The real question is who will get to see the film and how/where will they see it? The important audience is in the Sahel rather than European multiplexes or festivals. Can she manage to get it screened on local TV or physical media/internet services that local audiences can access? I feel I should also note that the violence in the film suffered by Sira and other women, is presented directly and some audiences may find it difficult to watch.
itp Global Film 