Foreigner

Runtime: 75-90'

Expected release: January, 2025

Production stage: Production

Budget: €334 280 (41% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Sales Agents, Distributors, Festivals, Financing

Synopsis:

Bourgeois, who was a scammer in Côte d’Ivoire and dreamed of living rich, arrived illegally in Europe ten years ago at the risk of his life. Bourgeois finally settles down in France: he marries, has children, and obtains papers.He will now have the choice between two countries, and two identities, but realizes that his life is in France. In Côte d’Ivoire, he will be an immigrant. In his own country, as in France, he has become a foreigner, a « lonan tché ».

 

 

 

Director’s profile:

Joel Akafou is an Ivorian filmmaker who makes films to heal the inner wounds caused by events both in his own world and in the world at large. Joel Akafou holds a master’s degree in dramatic art and a professional master’s degree in film directing, and has chosen the African oral tradition he acquired as a child as the basis for his cinematographic creation.

 

 

 

Producer’s profile:

Founded in 2017, the company has already produced several short films and is currently developing film projects for cinema and television. Les Films du Continent is also a co-production partner on a number of foreign films and is an executive producer for films, series and corporate videos. Refusing to be pigeonholed by others, in judgments often stigmatised by a stereotyped and simplistic representation. Learning to look at the significant and the insignificant, to link one to the other, to put them into perspective, to be able to tell stories differently and make the facts resonate differently. This is the goal that Les Films du Continent has set itself.

Florent is the founder, executive producer and manager of VraiVrai Films created in 2011. He has produced around thirty documentary films that have been selected and awarded in numerous festivals around the world – Berlinale Forum, Visions du réel, Entrevues de Belfort, Hot Docs Toronto… Among them two theatrical releases in France, TRAIT DE VIE by Sophie Arlot and Fabien Rabin in 2018 and AFTER THE CROSSING by Joël Akafou in 2022. The editorial line that he has instilled in VraiVrai Films bears witness to his roots in Saintonge, a mainly rural territory where he grew up, and to his experience in Cameroon and Syria for several years. This experience led him to question the stakes of the relations between the North and the South, still deeply marked by the history of slavery and colonization, and the evolutions of the rural world.

Souleymane Kébé is a producer based in Saint-Louis and Dakar. With Sunuy Films and Astou productions, he has been producing documentaries, series and dramas since 2012, notably « Sira » by Apolline Traoré, Audience Award at Berlin, Silver Stallion at Fespaco and « Banel & Adama » by Ramatoulaye Sy in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival… For the past two years, he has been involved in workshops such as Up courts métrages Dakar, Yaoundé film Lab, Impala Abidjan… Since 2015, he has co-organized the Saint-Louis « Stlouis’Docs » international documentary film festival.