Some of the West African film industry's biggest names are backing a new mentorship programme to support emerging women filmmakers. Showcased at this year's Cannes Film Festival, the Mariama Lab project aims to help women bring their stories to a wider audience in the region and beyond.
Born in Côte d’Ivoire, Azata Soro made her name as an actress in Burkina Faso and has since become a director and producer. She learned on the job, but always dreamed of going to film school for professional training. "I talk all the time about imposter syndrome, and it lasted for so long. I still carry it with me. My advice to young women today would be: 'Free yourself from it and shine,'" Soro tells RFI. Today, she is helping other young women as one of the coordinators for Mariama Lab, a year-long mentoring programme to support emerging women filmmakers from West Africa. Co-created by the Collectif 50/50, a French NGO for gender equality, and the Mariama Institut, a film writing residency in Mauritania, it is designed to boost women working on their first or second features. The five women chosen to participate in the first edition, which runs until December, hail from Gambia, Senegal, Guinea Conakry and Mauritania. Escaping the male gaze For Soro, cinema represents first and foremost a way for women to take control of their stories. "The first film I remember seeing on television was about excision [female genital mutilation] – I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I remember my father getting very angry about it. Our grandmother wanted that for us and he didn’t," she recalls. "Creating an African women’s cinema means telling our stories through our eyes without the male gaze focused on our bodies."
