It is a strange western that takes place in the heart of Sine Saloum, a delta located in Senegal just north of Gambia, classified in 1981 as a World Biosphere Reserve. In this universe of islands, bolongs (salt waterways) and mangroves, which is more conducive to calm stays admiring the many species of birds and tasting mangrove oysters, it is difficult to imagine violent scenes, spirits causing death or traumatized children.
Three mercenaries – Minuit, Rafa and Chaka – nicknamed the Hyenas of Bangui, escape by plane from the city of Bissau in the company of a Latin American drug trafficker, taking with them some gold bars. They are then forced to land in Sine Saloum following a fuel leak. And will have to settle in a small camp for tourists, led by a rather jovial former torturer, where vengeful entities reign... A voiceover warns the viewer: "At home, we say that revenge is like a river, and our actions a canoe guided by the current, of which one reaches the bottom only when one drowns. »
The story of the feature film Saloum, released at the end of January, was imagined by Jean Luc Herbulot and Paméla Diop. The former wrote the screenplay and directed the film, the latter produced it. Upon its release in late 2022 in the United States, the respected weekly The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "Moving with infectious joy from crime drama to modern western and horror film steeped in supernatural elements, Saloum may well be the rare African film to enter the international mainstream or, at the very least, achieve cult status. »
Nothing destined Paméla Diop to enter the world of cinema. Born on October 18, 1981 to a Senegalese father and a French mother in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes) - and rather very annoyed by the "Festival circus because of all these people, traffic jams and bans on coming and going" -, the young woman studied finance and accounting and headed towards entrepreneurship. At the age of 17, she discovered Senegal: “It was a shock. I felt like I was super out of place. Very disagreeable. She returns there two years later: “It was love at first sight. I met young people who were the same age as me and who did lots of different things. »
"I knew what I wanted"
Paméla Diop decides to settle there a year later. She is 20 years old. For about ten years, the entrepreneur did import-export between Senegal and France. “One day, by chance, I met a friend of a friend who was working on a short film and needed someone for accounting, organization, project management. I was completely seduced by this world. I knew what I wanted to do,” she recalls.
She then returned to Paris and resumed her studies. After validating her acquired experience, she followed a Master 2 in audiovisual media management at the Institute of Higher Economic and Commercial Studies (Inseec). After graduating, she began to be hired as production manager for 52-minute formats, advertisements in Gabon and Côte d'Ivoire, for local channels.
In 2021, Paméla Diop founded AWA Productions, a structure to host films written and/or directed by women from Africa and the diasporas. At the same time, she created the African Woman Action association, which sets up programs for initiation, discovery and training in cinema professions entirely dedicated to women. “Thanks to my agency, we got big contracts, especially in advertising. Before we gentrify, let's take that money and put it in a movie! It was time for me to move on to fiction. And my first baby is Saloum," says the producer.
"An African Western"
Knowing Jean Luc Herbulot, Franco-Congolese screenwriter and director born in Pointe-Noire (Congo) in 1983, who had just finished his collaboration on the detective series Sakho et Mangane commissioned by Canal Afrique, she offered him to come and work for a week on the story of Saloum in the village of Mar Lodj on the island of Mar, in the Sine Saloum delta.
In 2014, Jean Luc Herbulot wrote and directed his first feature film, Dealer, a very violent commando film shot in twelve days in Paris with a budget of 30,000 euros, which will be the first independent French film purchased and distributed by Netflix. A redefinition for the director of an urban fiction by detaching it from the suburbs and avoiding the usual cliché of the black or North African dealer against a background of hip-hop and rap.
“Saloum is a “southern”, an African western that I wanted to tint with a layer of terror and a layer of military-geopolitical history, assumes the screenwriter. Westerners will see a curiosity of a kind that is rare on the continent. Africans will perhaps see the possibility and the need to build heroes from our point of view, with a freedom of tone, of narration that is too often lacking in our cinema. »
Thanks to filming with 100% African financing, without subsidies and without co-production, on own funds, only five weeks were necessary to complete the adventure of the forty people - a 90% local team - who agreed to be paid little , working in several places in the delta: Ndangane, Simal (the camp), Palmarin, Mar Lodj…
Because the Sine Saloum is also one of the characters of the film, cinematographic at will. But the living and filming conditions were not the easiest, in particular because of the isolation. “We all lost between 10 and 15 kg, but we knew that we had experienced something unique in exceptional landscapes, with the kindness and patience of the people [in the villages]. A team at war against all the natural... and supernatural elements," emphasizes Jean Luc Herbulot.
After three years of adventures, Saloum was selected and critically acclaimed in 2021 at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), was present in more than forty festivals around the world and distributed in twenty African countries by Pathé BC Africa. After seeing the film, we may remember Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki Bouki (Le Voyage de la hyène) from 1973, a quasi-western called a "masterpiece" by Le Monde when it was released. Like a filiation fifty years apart.
Today, Paméla Diop is not resting on her laurels. Still with Jean Luc Herbulot, a new film has been shot and is currently in post-production: "Two Americans, who have a bomb on their chest, wake up in Dakar where they must survive. And a third, with a certain Awa, deaf and mute, as the main character, is in development. For the producer, it is about “developing the film industry in Senegal, from training to distribution. And we feel like we are at the beginning of a revolution. The path seems traced.
