Christopher Vourlias Debutante director Ramata-Toulaye Sy will join one of world cinema’s most select clubs when she climbs the stairs of the Grand Theatre Lumière on May 20 for the premiere of “Banel & Adama,” which unspools in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
It marks just the second time in the French fest’s 76-year history that a Black woman will compete for the Palme d’Or, a glass ceiling that was shattered only four years ago by Sy’s French Senegalese compatriot, Mati Diop (“Atlantics”).
While acknowledging the honor, it is a club, Sy admits, about which she has some ambivalence. “I really hope that soon all this will be taken for granted — that we won’t be counting the Black directors, that we won’t be counting women,” the helmer tells Variety. “It means that there’s still something wrong, that there’s still something that hasn’t become completely normal and natural.” With “Banel & Adama,” billed as a female emancipation drama about two star-crossed lovers in northern Senegal, Sy will also join the short list of filmmakers competing for Cannes’ highest honor with their debut features — among them Diop and another French Senegalese director, Ladj Ly (“Les Misérables”).
Sy was born and raised in a Parisian banlieue, the daughter of Senegalese immigrants. Film was an unlikely calling. “My parents can’t read and write.
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