Cinema from the Sahel

Amid the SAG-AFTRA strike, The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took over downtown for red carpet appearances, premiers, artist talks, screenings, and all other facets of cinephilia. I took to the Bell Lightbox to see Sira, the North American premier from Burkinabée director Appoline Traoré, winner of Berlinale’s Panorama Alliance Award and the Silver Stallion of Yennenga prize at Fespaco 2023.

Introduced by Nataleah Hunter-Young, TIFF’s International Programmer in charge of feature selections from Africa and Arab West Asia, it was an impactful moment to be a Black woman in the theatre as a Black woman introduced the director, a Burkina Faso-born Black woman. I smiled at the confidence on the stage, as I squirmed in my seat, knowing that this film, like its creator, meant business.  

In the early morning, the nomads are unexpectedly intruded upon by men in vehicles. All of the men are executed. Sira is raped, face forced against the sand. When he is done, he spits at her “you don’t deserve to die by my weapon,” leaving her in the dunes. Exhausted by trauma, tears, and general terror, Sira forces herself to follow the tire tracks left from his truck.

Conflict “across central Mali and Burkina Faso” has been brewing for years, and watching this film, Sira, in the comfort of a TIFF theatre was the first I was hearing of it. Presumably set in the year 2022, Sira shows an updated version of “ethnic killings” at the hand of Muslim extremists. Without the lens of Western Islamophobia, Sira shows a terrorism that is localized to a specific region in Africa. It is telling, as an audience member, that some nuance is being added to how people in the West view varied Muslim religion(s) and followers. It is complicated as both Sira and her attackers share religious practices and faith communities. The term ‘peul’ is used to refer to the Fula people in the Wolof dialect. Here, it is said with vitriol.

Sira’s family has made it to their destination, and Jean Sidi is made aware of the disappearance of his betrothed. He falls to his knees, and soon becomes determined to find her. Against his mother’s wishes, he voyages out on his own.

At the camp, Sira realizes that other girls have been kidnapped and brought here for the pleasure of the militia men. She steals essentials from the camp at night although sleeping alone in the cavern she has found for herself nearby.

By now Sira is heavily pregnant, a result of having been raped, and at first, she is in denial about her condition. When her hiding spot is discovered by Karim, a militia man, he shows trust to Sira, and goes so far as to arm her. He realizes her usefulness and motivation to also see an end to the terrorists.

This moment gave me pause because in the short time they have known each other, and under these extreme conditions, Karim arms Sira. This is an extreme level of trust, or grave personal risk, as audiences with a North American perception might feel. The systemic oppression of Black people has been justified in North America because of white fear that we will do to them what they have done to us, a confession in fact of their brutality and eye-for-an-eye thinking. Here, Karim does not seem to have the same power struggle. He arms Sira, tells her where to take her position, turns his back, and walks away.

The coup is successful. Karim is in the centre of the frame, no longer dressed as a militia but in army fatigues. He helps the escaped girls, calming them and letting them know they are safe now. A double agent, Karim helps to liberate the girls who hopefully begin their recovery. Karim is not a saviour, but a figure of feminism that mainstream white woman suffragists often negate. Black people already know that our men are the proto-feminists usually not featured in the retellings of liberation struggles. Black people already know the power of community and that gender works differently on us.

Sira takes her triumphant stance atop the rock she shot from, overlooking the exploded camp, the mangled bodies of the attackers who broke dreams, stole lives, mutilated futures. She hears something, someone, too close to her. We know that it is the voice of Jean Sidi, her fiancé who has been looking for her, risking his life as he crosses the desert for her. Before that end, they find each other. Rifle in the front of her and baby strapped to her back, Sira is not prepared to be filled with love, comfort, relief, or the permission to release paranoia. His tall frame walks painfully slowly, finally embracing his soon to be wife. Devoid of martyrdom, Sira is the survivor and the saviour.

The final scene is of the exploded camp. The audience applauds, a somber eruption that doesn’t know what else to do with this energy. Appoline Traoré takes to the stage once more, now flanked by Nataleah and Denis Cougnaud, the film’s co-producer. Traoré explains that she started writing naively, not knowing anything about terrorism, but the army gave her the information she needed to write the screenplay. Traoré said that she was sure not to place women in the positions of victims. She explained that over two million people have been displaced because of this conflict, and that she made a point to visit the refugee camps. There, she saw that women were the core of this war; men were either dead or joined the militias. It was the women holding the kids together, women who wrangle the teenagers to not join the terrorists. She knew that this film had to be about the women.

Traoré finished the night by exhaling that Sira was the toughest film she has ever made in her life, but that it has also made her the proudest. There is a longstanding belief that Black films have no demand, that African stories cannot sell, that there is no return on investment for Black art. After winning the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, Traoré has proven otherwise. The film itself is brimming with content that is urgent, gripping, and makes audiences want to get involved. Traoré’s work twits in our stomachs as we cannot writhe away from seeing and acknowledging a war that is not mainstream news. We are forced to hold that feeling in the pit of our guts long after the film is over. Sira is a film that wants to be remembered because it is triumphant and remembered because it made us tremble.