Photograph: Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP
Nearly a decade ago, when Ramata-Toulaye Sy sat down to write her graduation script at the end of a screenwriting degree, her goal was simple. “I wanted to tell the most beautiful and greatest African love story,” says the 37-year-old French Senegalese film-maker with a smile. “When I was growing up a lot of African stories were about misery, poverty, war. I wanted to say: we can have African stories about people falling in love.”
She pauses, her grin widening. “Most importantly, I wanted to write the story of how Juliet became Lady Macbeth.” It’s a description that nails the film she’s now directed, based on that script, Banel & Adama. A subversive feminist romance set in Senegal, it was the only film by a first-time director in the main competition at Cannes last year (pitting her against veterans Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes and Ken Loach in the running for the festival’s top prize).
