12 year-old Adama, voiced by French-Malian child actor Azize Abdoulaye Diabaté, lives in an idyllic village sheltered by cliffs. When his brother Samba defies their elders and flees to join the ‘Nassara’ (colonialist French army), Adama follows in an attempt to bring Samba home. Experimental animation combining laser-scanned sculptures of clay and sand with painterly animated scenes bring magical realism to Adama’s journey north from West Africa to Europe’s Western Front in 1914. A heroic odyssey mixes elements of mysticism and allegory with action, adventure, and a little known historical African narrative. For ages 10+.
Press
"Adama is that rare kid’s film that can’t easily be labeled a kid’s film, and in fact, offers more nuance and depth than most action-adventure films aimed at adults." - Cartoon Brew
Director's Statement
We live in a part of Paris where illegal immigrants come from Lampedusa and camp in the streets. An area not recommended by guidebooks, where different communities though mingle outside the apartment blocks.
From a mixed culture, a combination of a French upbringing and teen years shaped by hip hop, we had to go South to understand just how influenced we had been by the heritage of African culture and how deeply our artistic roots lay a song that had crossed the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, giving birth to gospel, blues, reggae and rap before turning into explosions of paint on the walls of New York, then of Paris.
Profoundly affected by our experiences in Africa, we immediately agreed the notions of looking, initiation and encounters were central. An encounter between two worlds: Africa and Europe; magic and hyperrealism; tradition and modernism. We wanted to imagine this subjective, mystical view of a world on the road to ruin.
Adama is an invitation to see through new eyes a chapter in history we think we know. A deeply subjective inverted fable. An exploration by a child from "somewhere else" of our sick and self-destructive world, which he attempts to re-enchant through poetry and magic.
Like an initiatory trance, the film recounts Adama's coming of age and reveals how he discovers his uniqueness, his identity, but also what connects him to everyone else, his very humanity.
Adama is set in a specific period - the First World War - but it is not an historical film. It is a tale which along the way turns into an historical account. What is important for us is the contemporary resonance of Adama's adventure. We know animation has the ability to connect audiences with the character's innermost being, to make perceptible Adama's changing view of the world, a world at war, which eventually gave rise to today's society.
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