As her new film Banel & Adama is released, Ramata Toulaye-Sy talks about becoming a reluctant sensation at Cannes, and why her passionate debut is upsetting a lot of men
Last year, Ramata-Toulaye Sy became only the second Black woman to compete for the Palme d’Or – with her first feature, no less – at Cannes. Banel & Adama, a tragic love story set in rural Senegal, shared red carpet space with future Oscar winners Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest at the festival – but ask her how she feels about scaling such lofty peaks so early in her career as a filmmaker, and the 37-year-old cuts a curiously ambivalent figure.
Growing up in Bezons, a suburb in the north-west of Paris, Sy dreamed of becoming a writer. But, as a child of the banlieues born to Senegalese immigrants, books felt like a dream too distant to pursue. “I saw film as a popular art form and literature always scared me a little bit; it was on a different level,” says Sy. “Film felt more accessible. Which is weird, because at the time, there weren’t many Black directors at the forefront.”
After interning at French production houses like Canal+ and Gaumont, Sy secured a place at the prestigious Femis school in Paris – alma mater to Clare Denis and Celine Sciamma, among others – where she studied screenwriting. Even then, she was ambivalent about her chosen path: “If I hadn’t got in it wouldn’t have been the end of the world for me because I never did want to become a filmmaker, I wanted to be a writer,” says Sy. “They’re two different jobs and you have to be careful. People think it’s all the same thing but being a director, you have to carry a load.”
It was while studying there, in 2014, that Sy began sketching out her idea for “the most beautiful and greatest African love story”, as she described it in one recent interview. Banel & Adama was a tale of newlywed lovers trying to build a world for themselves away from the prying eyes of their rural community, which wants Adama to acknowledge his birthright by stepping up as village chief, and Banel to sire his child.
Sy found a producer for the project, who began shopping her story around various directors, until it became clear that no one was biting. ”Why don’t you direct it yourself?” the producer suggested, but Sy was adamant: writing was her métier, so the film would have to wait. Perhaps that was a blessing. The story at the heart of Banel & Adama is a simple one, but the film possesses a thematic depth reflecting its evolution over the best part of a decade. With the bones of their love affair as a starting point, Sy’s focus soon shifted to Banel, a woman waging a war on nature in her obsessive quest to keep her lover close. Then, when she relocated to Dakar for four years in 2016, the extreme heat made Sy re-envision the story as one with three characters: “Banel, Adama and the climate”. (The title, happily, remained.)
Finally, after serving as a screenwriter on a couple of unrelated projects and releasing a short film, Astel, in 2021, she agreed to direct Banel & Adama herself. “I think I just needed time to find my cinematic voice,” Sy reflects on the situation now. “I learned a lot being a co-writer on other films; If I’d said yes right away it would have been a catastrophe.”
Casting was difficult: the film was to be performed in Pulaar, a minority language spoken in the north of the country, which meant working with professional actors was out of the question. Flouting the first rule of working with amateurs – always cast according to type – she selected Khady Mane and Mamadou Diallo as her leads. “What’s funny is they’re both the opposite of their roles,” says Sy. “Khady is actually really timid – she was 23 years old at the time and was still sleeping with the light on! And Mamadou is not at all calm [like Adama]; he has so much energy which I had to contain. It really was hyper-compliqué, but I felt something I couldn’t put into words, with Khady I think it was her eyes …”
Things got harder still once the cameras started rolling: echoing events in the film, where drought throws the village’s future into doubt, the shoot took place in May and June of 2022, with temperatures frequently topping 50ºC. “When you have to shoot in that heat with no shade it’s exhausting,” says Sy. “There was no electricity in the village; we all fell ill, some very seriously.” This grim episode reflects the reality many living in the region are now forced to live with, as canaries in the coal mine for global heating.
But climate is just one destabilising factor in a film that takes a somewhat troubling view on love; like the sun that beats down relentlessly on these characters’ heads, it’s a life-giving force that also threatens a whole way of life for the community. Adama rejects his birthright as village chief so he can spend more time with Banel; Banel commits the cardinal sin of not wanting kids, and may be keeping secrets too terrible to reveal here. She also kills birds with a catapult in moments of frustration, a trait Sy rolls her eyes at when I blunder in with a question.
“I don’t understand why the first thing people fasten on to with Banel is her cruelty to animals,” says the director, laughing. “It’s like they don’t seem to see her oppression! There was a journalist at Cannes who said your film is going to upset a lot of men, because Banel really puts in question their role in society. And there was one screening where this guy got extremely upset, and started saying that she doesn’t love him.”
Perhaps there’s something in the obsessive kind of love Banel has for Adama that offends the faint of heart; she would rather watch the world burn than see the bond between them broken. That’s not a very ‘noble’ definition of love, perhaps, but it is a deeply romantic one. As for Sy’s own relationship with filmmaking, only time will tell if it’s a marriage of convenience or a lasting love affair. “It’s good that I did this film but, uhh …” she says, on the verge of contradicting herself. “… no, it is good that I did it! I’m glad because it’s my vision; it’s a very personal story and I’ve finally achieved it.”
Banel & Adama is out in UK cinemas now.