Film Africa has returned to venues across London for its annual celebration of the best African and African diaspora cinema. Hosted by The Royal African Society, the capital’s largest African film festival provides a platform for talented filmmakers to showcase their creative labour to captivated audiences. One such cineaste is Ellie Foumbi, a Cameroon-born, New York-raised actor, writer and director whose first feature-length movie, ‘Our Father, The Devil’ (2021), has been the festival’s opening film. It’s a poignant tale of trauma, revenge and redemption that follows Marie (Babetida Sadjo), an African refugee living in a French village whose quiet life is overturned when she recognises the new parish priest, Father Patrick (Souléymane Sy Savané), as the former war lord who murdered her family and recruited her as a child.

Foumbi attained her MFA in directing at Columbia University and was selected for the New York Film Festival’s Artist Academy. This year she was named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine. ‘Our Father, The Devil’ was supported by the Venice Biennale College Cinema initiative and presented at the festival last year. It also won the audience award at this year’s Tribeca Festival. The story stems from her long-time concern for the rehabilitation of child soldiers, something she understood through her father’s work in Rwanda and the Central African Republic with the UN. Nataal sat down with Foumbi to discuss her film, her experiences as an up-and-coming director and the importance of fostering a creative community.

What were your intentions when conceptualising ‘Our Father, The Devil’?

I became obsessed with child soldiers because all children are innocent in my eyes. The idea of these innocent beings committing atrocities against other people was something I was trying to wrap my brain around. I thought about these films that are made about child soldiers where you’re only seeing how they’re recruited; you’re only seeing the violence of the war. You don’t ever really know what happens to these kids or how they evolve as human beings. So, I wanted to explore that from a woman’s perspective. I wanted to dig into this idea of redemption and second chances. I think we live in a society where not everyone is given a second chance, you know? Not everyone is afforded that privilege. I wanted to look at what that looked like.

It’s immediately clear that the protagonist Marie Cissé is plagued with a silent anguish. How did you endeavour to convey that cinematically?

I didn’t have to direct Babetida too much, we just talked about what’s happening in each scene. Those are the only instructions I ever give to actors. I like a still camera, I don’t like to cut away very much, so my style has to lean towards long takes and I think that it also allows the actor to be present and to complete their action without interruption.

It's interesting at the beginning of the film that there are a lot of shots in which the head of the protagonist is truncated, which leaves the viewer intrigued.

Yeah, what you’re talking about is in the introductions between Marie’s character and Father Patrick’s character. That was an intentional choice because the film is about identity; who these people are and the double side of them – the fact that they’re both carrying a secret… I also use reflections (mirrors, glass) as symbolic of the characters’ double identities and the ways in which they reflect on the past.

How do you want the viewer to feel during your film and afterwards?

I’m not the kind of filmmaker that will prescribe that. People have felt a lot of different things in my movie and whatever you feel is okay. The film is kind of designed to be polarising so I like when people take different things away from it. One thing I will say: I do hope that the film pushes people to reconsider their relationship to forgiveness.

What else was important to you when making the film?

I’m making a comment on the Black body. People have asked me why most of the violence is off-screen. And it’s because I felt that the violence was all internal and already in the body. I didn’t want to see any violence against the Black body specifically. For instance, there’s the moment Marie reveals the scar on her shoulder. It’s really important that it’s a psychological violence and it’s this vicious cycle that continues, and that the psychological violence is much worse than the physical violence, actually.

As your first feature length film, how did you find the experience compared to making shorter works?

The process of shooting it is the same but the pre- and post-production and the challenges of finding money makes it different. There’s just a lot more to manage. For example, I knew that I needed to be able to afford to hire heads of departments, and shooting in France during covid complicated things because there are different protocols. Bringing the US team in was a whole thing. It was just the stress of figuring these different hurdles out.

What advice would you give to young Black people trying to start out in the film industry?

Number one: we need to be much more supportive of each other because there’s power in the collective. Often we’re coming from communities, especially as Africans, where we don’t have access to the industry. It feels like a pipe-dream. At least Nollywood offers more of an industry but in Cameroon, I can only think of around three people that are visible, and one of them is in my generation. When young Black people come up to me at film festivals, a lot of what I’m hearing is, “I really wanna do this but I don’t know where to start, I don’t have anybody to help me.” So, I’m literally at festivals pulling people together saying, “You’re trying to start and you’re trying to start, you guys need to come together.” Having somebody else to figure it out with makes a huge difference.

Number two: it’s being honest with yourself about how badly you want this. Are you willing to do the research, to do the work? I watched everything that came out, I was reading screenplays. If you want to be a writer you have to read and you have to actually write. I think that’s really important.

Have you been able to foster your own film community?

Yeah! I fostered it a bit in film school, but also when I was working as an actress I was meeting a lot of filmmakers who encouraged me. I know some really amazing Black female filmmakers: Nikyatu Jusu, who did ‘Nanny’ (2022), Ekwa Msangi, who did ‘Farewell Amor’ (2020) and Chinonye Chukwu, who has ‘Till’ (2022) coming out. That’s my community, I have really wonderful Black women around me.

Film Africa is happening at venues around London from 28 October to 6 November 2022. Discover more information here.