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France’s The Party Film Sales has acquired worldwide sales rights on Mamadou Dia’s Demba, ahead of the film’s world premiere in Encounters at the Berlinale.

It is the second feature from Senegalese filmmaker Dia, after 2019’s Nafi’s Father.

Demba follows a 55-year-old man near retirement - whose mental health is deteriorating after the death of his wife two years previously - who reconnects with his estranged son.

The film shot in winter 2023 in Senegal, produced by Maba Ba for Senegal’s Joyedidi in co-production with Nikole Gerhards for Germany’s NiKo Film. It received backing from...

Fund to invest a total of €360,000 in latest funding of financing

The Berlinale’s World Cinema Fund (Wcf) is to provide a total of €360,000 in funding for 14 international projects.

In its latest funding round, the Wcf has recommended production funding for 11 projects and distribution grants for three films.

The 14 independent projects hail from Argentina, Chile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Mozambique, Nigeria, the Republic of Belarus, Rwanda, Senegal and Thailand.

The production funding recipients include Demba by Senegalese writer-director Mamadou Dia, whose feature debut Nafi’s Father won the best first feature prize Locarno in...

Director Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi dedicates award to ‘women of Iran and younger generation.’

Iranian director Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi’s directorial debut drama A Tale of Shemroon won the Marrakech International’s Film Festival’s Etoile d’Or grand prize as the nine-day festival wrapped its 19th in-person edition over the weekend.

The Farsi and French-language film takes place north of Tehran and follows a boy and his younger brother who, following the death of their mother, attempt to launch a quick money-making business to help their family, but end up getting caught up in an illegal drug trade and Tehran’s wealthy world of corruption.

Marrakech – It wasn’t that long ago that filmmakers Maba Ba and Mamadou Dia were touring Senegal with an inflatable screen so that locals could see Dia’s award-winning feature debut, “Nafi’s Father.”

Exploring fundamentalism through this story about a fight between an Imam, and his brother over their children’s marriage, the drama won best first feature in Locarno in 2019, and went on to become Senegal’s Oscar entry.

Dia’s second feature “Demba” has brought the NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ graduates and production partners at the U.S.-Senegal production company, JoyeDidi, to Marrakech for this week’s Atlas Workshops industry and mentoring program, which wraps Nov. 17.

Showing their can-do attitude, “Demba,” which is part of the program’s projects in development section with the aim of raising the remaining Euro 900,000 needed to shoot the project in a month – will begin filming either way. “Yes,...

“Nafi’s Father” director Mamadou Dia and producer Maba Ba found the inspiration to make their film — which is Senegal’s entry in the Oscars International Film category — out of the desire to show how the roots of extremism start small but can cause long-term damage.

The film, set in a small Senegalese town and filmed where Dia grew up, follows the fight between an Imam and his powerful brother over their children’s marriage. The story becomes a metaphor for the insidious nature of extremism that invades the village and shows extremism — be it political, religious or cultural — is a global problem that must be addressed before a crisis happens, not after.

A panel discussion of “Nafi’s Father” was truly an international event, with Dia connecting virtually from Dakar in Senegal, Ba weighing in from Brooklyn, New York, and TheWrap’s editor in chief Sharon Waxman moderating in Los Angeles.

Power dynamics wrapped in religious intolerance drives a wedge between two brothers in Mamadou Dia’s engrossing feature debut, “Nafi’s Father.” While presenting two competing visions of Islam, the film plainly shows fundamentalism as an aberrant strain foreign to Senegal, wielded as a means of control rather than a genuine belief system; even though the Islamist topic is hardly under the radar of late, Dia grants his characters warmth and humor in their struggles and makes the story feel fresh without compromising on drama. Not enough sub-Saharan films make it to festivals let alone art-house cinemas, but the strength of “Nafi’s Father,” plus two Locarno wins, including the Golden Leopard in the Cinema of the Present section, should boost its chances considerably.

In a small town in the northeast of Senegal, the local Tierno, a religious leader qualified to be an Imam, practices a centuries-old homegrown version of...

Written by award-winning Nyu grad Kiara Jones ("Barbasol"), "Christmas Wedding Baby" is warm and inviting, even if it seems we’ve been to this party before. The film focuses on three sisters. The baby of the trio, Andrea (the adorable Kimberley Drummond) is in town for her wedding to the wealthy Brent (Maba Ba), but it’s clear something is amiss, as he’s been too busy to come for the pre-wedding preparations. This small town in North Florida doesn’t have too many professional photographers and Andrea’s ex Gabriel (Sawandi Wilson) was hired by the wedding planner to effectively capture her beauty on this momentous occasion. Sparks fly between the two, compounding...

Written by award-winning Nyu grad Kiara Jones ("Barbasol"), "Christmas Wedding Baby" is warm and inviting, even if it seems we’ve been to this party before. The film focuses on three sisters. The baby of the trio, Andrea (the adorable Kimberley Drummond) is in town for her wedding to the wealthy Brent (Maba Ba), but it’s clear something is amiss, as he’s been too busy to come for the pre-wedding preparations. This small town in North Florida doesn’t have too many professional photographers and Andrea’s ex Gabriel (Sawandi Wilson) was hired by the wedding planner to effectively capture her beauty on this momentous occasion. Sparks fly between the two, compounding...