31 Salah, an African Toubab

Salah, an African Toubab (31)

14:00, Thursday 02nd July, Theatre A

  • Director: Margriet Jansen (Net)
  • Year: 2008
  • Run time: 68'
  • Format: XDCAM, PAL

Every African wants to go to Europe is the common public opinion in Europe. The young and energetic will rise to the opportunity of finding a better life in Europe or the US. But there are young people who choose differently. People who love their native country and who realize that happiness is not an easy commodity in a foreign land. Salah Salahina Sounfountera, living in Mali, is such a man. Having made his decision to stay, and ambitious enough to build his own company in Africa, his daily reality is a hard one. As a tourist guide he has become a “modern man”, with western ideas who wants to take the best of both worlds, not realising that he will fall into the gap between two cultures. His ideas conflict with the expectations of both his family and his wife. He is seen as a toubab, an outsider, a white man. In this intimate portrait of a young man struggling with his identiy, we get to see a different picture of contemporary West-Africa.

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About this Festival

Sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain & Ireland (RAI) since 1985, it is an itinerant festival that moves biennially from one university host to another, in association with local community and cultural organisations.

The festival was held from Wednesday July 1st to Saturday July 4th 2009, and included over 50 hours of screenings of new films, a major international conference, and a targeted selection of events focusing on anthropological ethics in filmmaking, youth participatory film, and archiving ethnographic film.

Read more about the RAI 2009 festival

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