Rotterdam Movie Competition winner Cyrielle Raingou (“Le Spectre de Boko Haram”) has secured French backing for “Pour toi je reviendrai” (I’m Coming for You), which tells the story of a single mom in northern Cameroon who joins forces with a radical group of ladies after being forged out of her neighborhood. Raingou is pitching the venture this week on the Durban FilmMart.
The movie can be produced by Raingou and Alice Abah for the director’s Cameroon-based shingle Je Seize Ma Réalité, together with French producer Jean-Marie Gigon’s SaNoSi Productions. Gigon’s credit embody Gessica Généus’ Haitian drama “Freda,” which was the island nation’s submission for the 2022 Academy Awards, and Maciek Hamela’s Ukrainian warfare documentary “Within the Rearview,” which was Oscar short-listed this yr.
Pic may even be co-produced by Canal+, which has acquired the movie for Africa, Haiti and French abroad departments and territories. French rights are nonetheless out there.
“I’m Coming for You,” which is the director’s fiction function debut, follows Kaltoumi, a younger mom and engineer who lives in a patriarchal society with a robust perception in magic. Burning with need to get pleasure from a freedom that the majority ladies in her neighborhood are disadvantaged of, she buys a motorcycle that she drives across the Sahel, away from prying eyes.
Deserted by her husband and elevating her three-month-old daughter alone, Kaltoumi is pressured to site visitors items with terrorists from the militant group Boko Haram, hiding within the vastness of the Sahelian area between Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. However her felony actions are delivered to gentle by a village chief, who seizes her child and casts a crippling spell on her.
Solid out from her neighborhood, she units off on a journey to discover a miraculous remedy, becoming a member of forces with a radical group of ladies who battle towards terrorists and any type of society that locations ladies beneath absolutely the domination of males.
Chatting with Selection in Durban, Raingou mentioned her sophomore movie is “paying tribute to ladies,” including: “It doesn’t matter what field society is attempting to lock you in, you may positively determine who you wish to be. That’s what my movie is about. You need to take energy. They’re not going to present it to you. You need to take it and be who you wish to be.”
The movie comes on the heels of Raingou’s heralded debut — the primary African movie to win Rotterdam’s Tiger Award — which follows three schoolchildren in northern Cameroon residing on the periphery of a warfare waged by the infamous militant group of its title. “Spectre” was described by Selection’s Murtada Elfadl as “a clear-eyed have a look at how on a regular basis life and the accompanying humdrum duties go on regardless of the specter of violence at any second.”
“I’m Coming for You” was impressed by the director’s expertise whereas capturing that movie and interacting with ladies within the far north of her native Cameroon. “I observed how resilient, but additionally ingenious, they are often in that area the place nothing is feasible [for women],” Raingou mentioned. The precarity of life within the arid Sahel area, she defined, has pressured many to do enterprise with the very Islamic militants who’ve been terrorizing their communities for years.
“I drew inspiration from the truth of those ladies who residing in very patriarchal and conservative societies which might be simply attempting to scale back them, who in actual life are extra than simply ladies who [can be placed in a] field, who’re very dynamic,” she mentioned. “It’s a venture the place ladies have two antagonists, terrorism and the patriarchy, which might be coming collectively to oppress them. And they’re looking for a technique to break away.”
“I’m Coming for You” has obtained awards and manufacturing grants from the Group of La Francophonie (OIF), the Kirch Basis, FILMAC, Visions Sud Est and the French Institute of Cameroon, and has presold to Canal+ and Chad nationwide broadcaster Télé Tchad. Raingou, who’s looking for a gross sales agent, potential co-producers in Northern Europe and distributors in North America, Europe and Asia, hopes to start filming at first of 2025.
The Durban FilmMart runs from July 19 – 22.
