22/12/2011

American actor-singer Saul Williams (unforgettable in Slam, winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 1998) plays the lead role in Alain Gomis’s new film, Aujourd'hui (“Today”), which marks the third feature by the French-Senegalese director after As a Man (Leopard for Best Debut Film at Locarno in 2001) and Andalucia [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2008). The cast also includes Aissa Maiga, Anisia Uzeyman and Djolof Mbengue.

Scripted by the director, the film traces the last day in the life of Satché, who knows he is going to die that evening. "As sometimes happens, everyone knew. How? Nobody could give an exact answer, experience perhaps. Around here, death still sometimes warns of its approach. It happens the day before, like a certainty that descends on the bodies and minds of the chosen one and those close to him. There is no doubt or fight possible."

Satché enters a strange space, revisits his past through different scenes, but with the intensity of a first time: the maternal home, his childhood neighbourhood, his friends in adolescence, his first love…During part of the day, he goes back to the forks in the road where other possibilities were at one point sketched out…

Executive produced by Gilles Sandoz for Maïa Cinéma (whose latest production A Better Life will be released theatrically on January 4) and by Granit Films, Aujourd'hui received co-production support from Agora Films and Cinekap (Senegal), backing in the form of an advance on receipts from France’s National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC), support from the OIF (International Organisation for Francophonie) and a pre-acquisition from TV5 Monde.

French distribution will be handled by Rezo and international sales by Wide Management for a title that hopes to have the opportunity to shine at the upcoming Berlinale.

(Translated from French)