Footsteps of a Migrant
Logline
Twin sisters Adama and Awa fulfil a lifelong dream to learn what happened to their migrant father who left them young. They travel from Senegal to Guinea-Bissau and Burkina Faso connect with his families he made in his travels and through the journey find their own identity.
Synopsis
Adama and Awa are 25-year-old Senegalese-Burkinabé twins living in Saint Louis, Senegal. They were born from a Burkinabé father, who left to make a life for himself when they were only eight years old, and a Senegalese mother. They searched for him for years before discovering an uncle, Drissa Ouédraogo, who was also looking for his brother, Abdoulaye. Having learned of the twins’ existence he comes to meet them for the first time in Senegal. He decides to go with them to follow Abdoulaye’s footsteps. Together they embark on a common quest through Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Burkina Faso. They meet the other families that Abdoulaye founded in Guinea-Bissau and Burkina Faso. The twins will get to know their paternal family and will be confronted with Mossi culture for the first time.
Director
Delphine Yerbanga
Delphine Yerbanga holds a Master I in audiovisual from the Institut de Formation en Technique de l’Information et de la Communication in Niger and a Master II in creative documentary filmmaking from the Université Gaston Berger in Saint Louis, Senegal. She started her career as a director in 2012 and created a production company in 2016. She has been the president of the Africadoc Burkina association since 2013. For the fiftieth anniversary of FESPACO, was appointed president of their Junior Space and is a member of the national organising committee of FESPACO.
Producers
Mamounata Nikiema
PILUMPIKU PRODUCTION
Mamounata Nikiéma has been working as a director since 2007 and as a producer since 2011. She is very involved in the networks of Burkina Faso filmmakers (Africadoc Burkina Faso, Screenwriter’s Guilds, Producers Association of Burkina Faso, National Federation of Cinema and Audio-Visual) and has been actively participating in FESPACO for several years, within the Junior Space until 2017. Since 2014, she has also been an assistant trainer during the documentary writing residencies in Bobo- Dioulasso. She is a member of the Mys’Tic Burkina association since 2017 and she has developed a blog on cinema. In 2018, she launched the event Ciné-équipement and the digital platform on cinema Sulunsuku in 2019.
Don Edkins
STEPS
Don Edkins is a South African documentary filmmaker and producer based in Cape
Town. He has produced documentary film projects that have been broadcast around
the world, such as Steps for the Future, Why Democracy? and Why Poverty? earning
multiple international awards, including an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and the
Special Teddy Award at the 63rd Berlinale for Steps for the Future. The Peabody
awarded Why Poverty? Project, with documentary films from 21 countries, was
screened globally by 70 broadcasters. He is Executive Producer of AfriDocs, a free-to-
view VOD platform and broadcast strand across Africa that screens the best African
and international documentary films. He is currently producing a new documentary film
project with African filmmakers across the continent, Generation Africa, around the
theme of migration. He is a mentor for the Berlinale Talents, Durban FilmMart, and
Docs by the Sea in Indonesia, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Tiny Mungwe
STEPS
Tiny Mungwe is a documentary film and arts producer. She currently works at STEPS
(Social Transformation and Empowerment Projects) where she produces Generation
Africa, a pan-African anthology of 25 documentary films from 16 countries in Africa, on
the topic of migration. Mungwe’s films include Akekho uGogo, a 48 minute
documentary about urban youth culture, which screened at several festivals including
the Durban International Film Festival, Apollo Film Festival and DOKANEMA Festival.
Her short film script Evelyn was selected for the National Film and Video Foundation
(NFVF) Women Filmmaker Project and she directed another short film in the program,
Daddy’s Boy. She has written for some of the highest rating South African television
dramas such as Muvhango and Matatiele, and was one of the directors on the series
Uzalo. For several years she worked as a festival organizer and programmer for four
international festivals, namely Time of the Writer, the Durban International Film
Festival, Jomba! Contemporary Dance Festival and Poetry Africa. During that time she also worked on the program for Durban FilmMart (the co-production market of the festival) and Talents Durban (a career development program for emerging African filmmakers in partnership with Berlinale Talents). She continues to work as a program curation associate for the Durban FilmMart. She also programmed and curated the city of Durban’s inaugural book and art fair, ARTiculate Africa.
