Parlons grand-mère

Fifteen years after TOUKI BOUKI, Djibril Diop Mambéty gets back behind a camera to film two things that are close to his heart: cinema and children. The cinema, to which he pays tribute here, is that of his young friend Idrissa Ouedraogo, who is currently shooting Yaaba, his second feature film; the cinema is also Burkina Faso, the only country in West Africa to have - under the impetus of Thomas Sankara - developed a real film "industry" with structures for production, support, direction and distribution of works. By evoking the filming of this Burkinabe film about a grandmother and two children, Djibril Diop Mambéty puts into image the relationship of contemporary Africa with childhood - his second passion. The filmmaker created the Yaadikone Foundation for Children and Nature in Dakar, named after a Senegalese "Robin Hood" who led a hard life for the colonists and fought against all injustices. This foundation intends to defend children and enable them, through specific initiatives, to escape abandonment and oblivion. Soberly, PARLONS GRAND-MERE is thus less a documentary than a film-poem, a film-manifesto on cinema, children and Africa.