Sékou Timité has one driving ambition: to follow in the footsteps of a griot father he barely knew and become a "djeli" himself - a guardian of memory and the spoken word in the Mandingo world. The only one in his family still interested in this endangered oral art, he leaves his wife, his village in Mali and a troubled marriage behind to travel the roads of the legendary Mandé empire.

From Côte d'Ivoire to Burkina Faso, from Mali to Senegal, Sékou meets master griots and ordinary men and women, listening to their stories of war, migration, belief and resistance, while facing the very concrete obstacles of a precarious present: his family's material needs, the political climate, and the difficulty of making a living from an immaterial art in a society where everything is written and published in real time. As his initiatory journey unfolds, the film weaves his path together with the long history of Mandingo memory, calling forth past figures through the testimonies and archival materials of filmmaker Dani Kouyaté, writer Dany Laferrière and historian Djibril Tamsir Niane, and echoing the legend of Sundiata Keita, who defeated King Soumaoro Kanté and founded the Kingdom of Mali.

With: Sékou Timité, Dani Kouyaté, Dany Laferrière, Djibril Tamsir Niane.
Language: Bambara

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
Sékou Timité comes from an old family of the "Djeli" caste, guardians of memory and customs in the ancient Mandingo Empire, which, in the 13th century, covered the current territories of Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast...
In this globalised world ravaged by colonisation and its subsidies and confronted to perpetual ethnic conflicts, storytellers and their unifying role are neglected.
Sékou, the only one in his family wanting to take up his parent's torch, wants to rediscover the essence of the griot and adapt it to our world. He goes across countries to follow the griot's path and to get spiritually closer to this unknown father.
The film takes the form of an eminently poetic initiatory road-movie in West Africa, carried by the ever imaginative words of the griots. This intimate film about Sékou opens up the possibility of a subtle and poetic portrait of shared memory and life in West Africa from the perspective of these storytellers.



Producer / Productrice : Mamounata Nikiema (Pilumpiku Production)

Director / Réalisateur : Boubacar SANGARÉ
Screenwriter / Scénariste : Boubacar Sangaré

PRODUCTION
Pilumpiku Production (Burkina Faso)

CO-PRODUCTION :
DS Productions (Mali)
Lully Grace Production (ivory Coast)
Sunuy Films (Senegal)


FESTIVALS / PRIX
* Selection /// Fabrique des cinémas du monde de l'Institut français (Cannes Festival 2022, France).
* Selection (along with 5 other PanAfrican film projects) /// 1st edition of Sentoo program (Burkina Faso, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia), in May 2019.
* Selection /// RÉSIDENCE D'ÉCRITURE DE KAYES / MALI, du 21 septembre au 2 octobre 2014 (Trainer: Jean-Louis Gonnet)
* Project Selection /// Africadoc 2014, St-Louis, Sénégal
*2026 : Visions du réel

WEB / Africiné's sources :
www.docmonde.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/CATALOGUE-Africadoc-2014.pdf
https://ouicoprod.org/fiche/?id=100