The Berlin Film Festival is screening this Saturday in the Panorama category the film At the Film Cemetery, the first feature film by Thierno Souleymane Diallo. In this docu-fiction, the young Guinean filmmaker puts himself on stage, while he is looking for the very first film shot by an African from the French-speaking area.
He was still just a simple film student when Thierno Souleymane Diallo learned that it was a fellow Guinean named Mamadou Touré who shot the very first film in the history of African cinema. A work that has everything of a myth because if everyone in the cinema has heard of it, no one has ever seen it. To the point of even doubting its existence.
The film, titled Mouramani, is a legend among the continent’s filmmakers. And there’s a reason they’ve never seen it, explains Thierno Souleymane Diallo, accompanied by Sidy Yansané from the Africa editorial team.
“I said to myself: if he has a film in 1953 and his film has disappeared, what will become of my own films? This is the starting point of his film. “I wanted to make a film about my desires for cinema. I had the idea of looking for this film: I’m making a film in which I go in search of a lost film…”