screenplay Sarah Bouyain in collaboration with Gaëlle Macé

cinematography Nicolas Gaurin

editing Valérie Loiseleux, Pascale Chavance

music Sylvain Chauveau

sound Marianne Roussy, Cécile Chagnaud, Thierry Delor

art direction Bill Mamadou Traoré, Barbara Creutz-Pachiodi, Marie Le Garrec

cast Dorylia Calmel (Amy), Assita Ouedraogo (Mariam), Nathalie Richard (Esther), Blandine Yaméogo (Acita), Nadine Kambou (Yéri Kadiatou), Dominique Reymond (Marie), Djénéba Koné (Awa), Jérôme Sénélas (Eliot)

producer Sophie Salbot, Sékou Traoré

production Athénaïse

co-production Abissia Productions

world sales

17 rue Chéroy, 75017 Paris

Tel. +33 1 4294 2543 - +33 6 2502 0096

Fax +33 1 4294 1705

synopsis
Amy, a young mixed-race woman, travels from Paris to Bobo, Burkina to reconnect with her mother, from whom she was separated at the age of eight. She discovers only her aunt living in the family home and finds the courtyard of her childhood both comforting and unsettling. She feels a stranger in a city where she has no bearings. For years now, Mariam, a Burkina housecleaner in Paris, has lived as a furtive shadow on the margins of society. “The film explores the question of being a stranger: to oneself and to a culture.” (Sarah Bouyain)

This is a film about immigration, about alienation, a fish out of water story that explores roots, social mores, manners and family habits. Delicately told, carefully performed, it holds its African exoticism, of being partly set in Burkina Faso, in check, whilst clearly representing the cultural differences from the west and particularly modern France, whilst still managing to be a coming-of-age tale, where an engaging young person discovers some important truths about herself and about her past. (Adrian Wootton)