Gavagai

  • Gavagai
Genre : Drama
Type : Fiction
Original title :
Principal country concerned : Column : Cinema/tv
Year of production : 2025
Format : Feature
Running time : 89 (in minutes)

Actors Maja and Nourou have an affair while shooting a modern adaptation of Medea in Senegal, but things take a dark turn after the film's premiere. An unflinchingly complex look at racial tensions, filmmaking and power dynamics.

In Dakar, during the making of a modernist take on the Medea myth, fellow actors Maja and Nourou start an affair to ease the pressures on set and the piercing feelings of loneliness. Once the shoot is over, they meet again only for the premiere in Berlin - which turns into a disaster when the press questions the film projecting a European narrative onto a former colony.

The word ‘gavagai' originates from a thought experiment by philosopher and logician W.V. Quine, who suggested that translation is inextricably tied to context - without it, everything can theoretically mean everything. Berlin School outlier Ulrich Köhler (In My Room, IFFR 2019) turns this idea into an essay on our modern society in which appearance is everything and all is ruled by the laws of clickbait. Köhler refuses to give into the laziness, frustration and anger that is so prevalent in today's media and art discourse. One of the most politically pertinent films of the year.



Film by Ulrich Köhler,

*Sélected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam

Colaboradores

  • Arterial network
  • Media, Sports and Entertainment Group (MSE)
  • Gens de la Caraïbe
  • Groupe 30 Afrique
  • Alliance Française VANUATU
  • PACIFIC ARTS ALLIANCE
  • FURTHER ARTS
  • Zimbabwe : Culture Fund Of Zimbabwe Trust
  • RDC : Groupe TACCEMS
  • Rwanda : Positive Production
  • Togo : Kadam Kadam
  • Niger : ONG Culture Art Humanité
  • Collectif 2004 Images
  • Africultures Burkina-Faso
  • Bénincultures / Editions Plurielles
  • Africiné
  • Afrilivres

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