At the end of a road, surrounded by baobab trees, stands a school in central Senegal. "Silence… Action!" The camera slowly pans on its stand, focusing on the lead actor. The film crew holds its breath.
"Cut!" "That's perfect!" says director Leila Sy, who is filming "Banlieusard
2," the sequel to the first installment starring French rapper Kery James. The film is scheduled to be released in a few months on Netflix.
Assistants, technicians, actors… everyone takes a breath. It's the last day of filming, fatigue is written on their faces, and the lunch break is welcome. Today's lunch is chicken yassa, a traditional dish. The American giant is making its mark in French-speaking West Africa. After a long period of stagnation, the region is seeing an explosion in audiovisual production, led by Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire. "The light makes all the difference. I find everything beautiful, the colors, the people, the energy," marvels Ms. Sy. "The teams are here, the skills are here, Senegal is repositioning itself in this ecosystem and offering international producers the opportunity to come and develop projects without any worries," says Ousmane Fall, co-producer for the Senegalese part of the film.
In a cramped room in a clinic in Dakar, another group, much smaller but highly motivated, is busy wrapping up the next episode of the series "Karma," broadcast locally on the TFM channel.
Successful soap operas
The entire team learned the trade on the job. Souleymane Camara, 29, wears many hats. An interpreter in the series, he dreams of getting behind the camera. "It's through practice that I learn," he says. He works for Marodi, a leader in Senegalese and West African series production. Launched in 2015, the company initially specialized in digital before migrating to YouTube, where it has more than 4.8 million subscribers and claims more than 20 million views each month. Its business model is based on local content and commercials that generate millions of views. Its audience is 56% female and 70% aged 18-34. Its partnerships with Senegalese TV channels and international distributors such as Canal+ and Amazon Prime ensure high visibility, as in the case of the hit series "Maîtresse d'un homme marié" (Mistress of a Married Man). "Marodi's ambition is to be a content producer for all of Africa and the diaspora," Julia Cabrita Diatta, sales and marketing director, told AFP. Today, 60% of its consumers are in Senegal, 20% elsewhere in Africa, and 8% in France. "In French-speaking Africa, we are seeing a surge in production volume, driven by Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, and budgets that have increased enormously," explains Pierre Barrot, audiovisual program manager at the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF).
As a result, 52-minute series have gone from a dozen episodes in 25 years (1992-2017) to around 100 episodes in five years (2018-2022), driven mainly by Canal+ and TV5 Monde, which broadcast them regionally.
This format remains less popular locally than the classic 26-minute format, which most often features sentimental family themes (the triptych of polygamy/adultery, inheritance, witchcraft) or police comedy.
New wave
In September, Canal+ launched its first daily series in French-speaking Africa,
"Le Futur est à nous" (The Future is Ours), which recounts the lives of several families
in a neighborhood of Abidjan.
Beyond series, French-speaking Africa—unlike Nigeria, the continent's leading film power—produces very few TV movies and relatively few feature films, but the production of popular comedies could accelerate with the reappearance of a network of movie theaters, as in Dakar and Abidjan, according to Mr. Barrot of the OIF.
With 56,652 paying admissions in 12 countries, the film "Les Trois lascars" by Burkina Faso's Boubakar Diallo, distributed by Canal+, became the biggest box office hit of the early 21st century in French-speaking Africa in early 2022, according to the OIF.
However, this figure is minimal compared to the successes of the 1990s, when Gaston Kaboré's "Buud Yam" reached 500,000 admissions in 1997. That was before cinema, once very popular, experienced a spectacular decline in the 2000s, marked by the disappearance of almost all theaters in French-speaking Africa.
A new generation is emerging today. The Kourtrajmé school opened its doors in Dakar in 2022 to train screenwriters and directors and meet the demand in the sector.
The first class of students are finishing their studies, confident in the future. "We've never had so many series. In a short while, it will go even further. Personally, I'm very positive. There are lots of opportunities coming," says Kenza Madeira, 23, who wants to find a balance between acting and directing.
Source: AFP
See also: Feature – Series produced in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa in 2021