Kino Lorber shared the official trailer for Banel & Adama, the Senegalese romantic drama film starring Khady Mane as Banel and Mamadou Diallo as Adama, young adults who fall in love and decide to live separately from their families in a remote village in northern Senegal, and find their relationship tested by pressures from the community.

The movie was selected as the Senegalese official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.

Release Date

Directed by Ramata-Toulaye Sy, making her feature directorial debut, Banel & Adama world premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, and opens in theaters on June 7, 2024.

Synopsis

Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. The married couple lives in a remote village in northern Senegal. For them, nothing else exists except each other. But for the rest of their tight-knit village, duty dictates that Adama accept the role of chief. The two lovers have their own plans… until something in the air changes. The rains do not come, the cattle begin to die, the men leave. The curse weighs on Adama’s sense of duty, and the chasm between them drives Banel into a feverish, mystical chaos. Banel & Adama is a lush and lyrical West African dreamscape, a tragic romance that soars to the heights of longing and descends deep into the realm of myth as it sets its protagonists’ perfect everlasting love on a collision course with their community’s traditions.

Reviews

The Guardian review gave the film 4 of 5 stars, wrote, “Even at the very start of the film, when the sun smiles on the devoted love between Banel and her husband of one year, there are indications that she is different. She rejects traditional scarves and wears her hair defiantly uncovered; she prefers the man’s work of herding cattle alongside Adama to the women’s field work and laundry. And, as several lizards learn to their cost, there’s a violence lurking in her heart. Banel’s will is fearsome, but when a drought strikes, she finds herself facing up against the might of the natural world. Tragedy is inevitable, but the poetry of Sy’s vision is fresh and distinctive.”

Variety review called first-time feature director Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s movie a ‘Dreamlike Debut’, wrote, “Sy’s film is a curious little fable, not quite fully formed in its final stages, and occasionally so sedate and opaque, under Bachar Mar-Khalifé’s melodic, piano-forward score, that it feels like it is drowsing. But it’s a striking debut nonetheless, especially as it revolves, with graceful poetry around the inner experiences of such a curious, unknowable woman. Banel, beautifully played by Mane who, even when we don’t, seems to perfectly understand her character’s joys and miseries and her flashes of prideful feminine ego (“Look at him,” she murmurs in voiceover, “No, look at me. Aren’t I a woman?”) is the one who will, for all her protestations of devotion, inherit the film.”

Official Trailer

Watch the official trailer for Banel & Adama.