In the bustling city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a recently erected statue of Ousmane Sembène towered over the crowds that attended the Pan-African Film and Television Festival in early March. Unveiled to mark the centenary of Sembène’s birth, the statue (pictured above) depicts the legendary Senegalese filmmaker in his signature cap, smoking his pipe with a contemplative gaze.
Sembène’s legacy looms large in African cinema. His unique style of using social realist storytelling in his films, which he learned at the renowned Gorky Film Studio in Moscow, has influenced generations of Senegalese filmmakers, who today tour the most prestigious film festivals around the world.
Among them are Alain Gomis, whose film Félicité won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival, and Mati Diop whose film Atlantics won the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, when it was the first film directed by a black woman presented at the competition.
But despite international acclaim, the Senegalese film industry has failed to reach the commercial heights of other countries. Unlike Nigerian Nollywood, which is now the second largest film industry in the world after Hollywood, worth $6.4 billion by 2022, Senegalese films struggle to find an audience at home and generate poor revenue through ticket sales .
According to a 2016 study by the International Organization of La Francophonie, the turnover of the Senegalese audiovisual sector was US$32.8 million, of which about US$13 million comes from TV advertising. As such, its contribution to the larger economy is still very limited.
Why is it that Senegal, with a long tradition of iconic filmmakers such as Sembène, and a plethora of films presented each year at festivals around the world, is still struggling to establish a thriving film industry?
Another successful French-Senegalese director, Leila Sy (R), on set in Senegal. (Photo by SEYLLOU/AFP)
Pleasing a local audience
Most Senegalese films receiving attention at international film festivals are author-led art films that are co-productions with Western countries. These mostly non-commercial films do not appeal to the average Senegalese viewer.
“Today we have films that are largely co-financed by Western production companies, who want a certain style of filmmaking, which is not the style that the average Senegalese would necessarily use,” said Toumani Sangaré, a film director and producer.
To achieve more local success, filmmakers need to make more mainstream Hollywood-style films that resonate with a wider regional audience.
“Like anywhere in the world, local audiences are more likely to pay for mainstream, heavily produced films than for national productions. They feel they are getting more for their money,” says Sangaré, who opened a film school in Dakar last year.
In Francophone Africa, there are already some promising examples of locally produced films that have become popular hits. Les Trois Lascars, a Burkinabé comedy directed by Boubacar Diallo, attracted more than 50,000 viewers upon its release in 2021, a relative success considering there are only 20-25 cinemas in the region.
Sangaré’s own mini-series ‘Taxi Tigui’, which tells the story of a taxi driver in Bamako, was also a success in 2016, relying exclusively on Malian production companies.
To replicate this model, says Sangaré, “we need to find new funding mechanisms, usually involving domestic and international private actors, to produce those mainstream films on the scale of the ones we export to international film festivals every year.”
But local and foreign investors can argue that films are only worth producing if they are widely distributed. Despite representing a potential market of around 140 million, the small number of cinemas in the francophone countries of West Africa makes it difficult to envision a profitable industry.
A movie theater revival?
The Senegalese film industry experienced a ‘golden age’ in the 1970s, when nearly 37 cinemas were active in the capital Dakar alone.
This period also spawned Senegalese films that have now become classics, such as Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki, which was acclaimed at festivals in Cannes and Moscow, and was made on a budget of $30,000, obtained in part from the government.
But the economic realities of the 1980s took their toll on the country’s creative industries. “In the 1980s, the IMF asked African states to implement austerity measures and the first sector to be hit was culture and cinema in particular,” says Sangaré.
The decline of the film industry has left an important space for public gathering and cultural expression. It also changed the role of the state within industry. Nowadays, the Senegalese government mainly helps to finance small-scale projects, which usually do well internationally, through a special fund: the Film and Audiovisual Industry Promotion Fund (FOPICA). During the Covid-19 pandemic, it mobilized $500,000 to support production companies, filmmakers and audiovisual technicians.
In recent years there has been a renewed interest in cinema in Senegal. In 2016, French mass media holding company Vivendi launched a network of cinemas called Canal Olympia across Africa, including one in Dakar. In October last year, Pathé opened a modern cinema in Dakar with seven ultra-modern cinemas and a capacity of more than 1,400 cinema visitors. Nearby, an upscale mall, the Sea Plaza, began showing the latest American movies about five years ago.
“We feel the excitement around the return of movie theaters, as well as the desire of private players to be part of this dynamic,” says Sangaré.
The next step is for Senegalese directors to replace American and French blockbusters. Six American and five French films are at the top of the billboard at the Pathé at the time of writing. Only one Senegalese production makes it there: Mère-Bi (“Mother-Bi”), a documentary about the late Senegalese journalist and writer Annette Mbaye d’Erneville, directed by her filmmaker son Ousmane William Mbaye.
Streaming platforms to boost local productions
TV series are another potential source of income for Senegalese producers. Ibou Gueye, the CEO of Senegalese production company EvenProd, told French magazine Le Monde that producers usually keep between 60 and 70% of advertising revenue.
There is a big shift to series and movies on demand. With over 5 million subscribers on its YouTube channel, Marodi TV is the largest player in the Senegalese on-demand space. The extensive catalog of local programming has proven popular with home audiences and the wider francophone African market. The platform says that foreign television channels are the third source of income, after Senegalese channels and YouTube.
Founded in 2014, Keewu Productions released the first Senegalese series to appear on Netflix four years ago. The crime drama Sakho & Mangane, set in Dakar, managed to reach a British audience after being acquired by Channel 4 for its on-demand platform All 4.
But the most influential player, both in on-demand and production, is the French media Canal+, owned by the French family company Bolloré. This year, Canal+ launched the Digital Factory in Dakar, a digital creation hub made up of graphic designers, video makers and community managers from across the continent who work together to produce content for an African audience.
This new set-up and business model is likely to boost the production of local films that will reach local audiences without relying on foreign funding. With an estimated 14.7 million internet users, equating to a penetration rate of about 80%, streaming platforms continue to advance, supporting a new wave of movies funded solely by local production companies.