L'appel des arènes

Longing for a brighter future, two Senegalese teenagers embark on a journey from West Africa to Italy. However, between their dreams and reality lies a labyrinth of checkpoints, the Sahara Desert, and the vast waters of the Mediterranean.

This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who's sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.

Jacques Arnault, head of Sud Secours NGO, is planning a high impact operation: he and his team are going to exfiltrate 300 orphan victims of the Chadian civil war and bring them to French adoption applicants. Françoise Dubois, a journalist, is invited to come along with them and handle the media coverage for this operation. Completely immersed in the brutal reality of a country at war, the NGO members start losing their convictions and are faced with the limits of humanitarian intervention.

In 1970, Léopold Senghor – President of Independent Senegal – wants to create a “Senegalese” architecture... and commissions two Frenchmen to build CICES, a modernist masterpiece in which the Dakar International Fair is held every year. In static shots, Laurence Bonvin captures the spirit of place and its modern usages, which interact with the ghosts of a glorious past.