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 Djolof Mbengue from Senegal makes his acting debut in L'Afrance Actor Djolof Mbengue Djolof Mbengue makes a successful acting debut in L'Afrance, a film directed by Alain Gomis. Mbengue is Senegalese but lives in France and so is ideally suited to play the leading role of El Hadji, in a film which addresses quite a popular theme at this year's FESPACO, that of immigrants and their cultural identity and values whilst in Europe. Speaking to the BBC programme FESPACO Live, Mbengue explained more about the demands of this his first appearance on a film screen. "This is my first movie." he said. "I am not a professional because I never went to school to learn how to act but I have a feeling for it." He continued "I had the opportunity to express something and I did it". Mbengue's performance and the film as a whole went down very well with audiences at FESPACO. But Mbengue is very modest about his own part in its apparent success. "I don't know if I was good or not because you cannot be both actor and spectator" he said. He explained that the film's curious title, L'Afrance is a mixture of the words Africa and France and speaks of a land that exists in the mind. "Immigrants in Paris always say to themselves that they will go back to Africa eventually" he said. "But then ten or 20 years later, they are still there saying ... 'ok when I finish my work I'll go back... when the kids grow up I'll go back... but if I die, where will they bury me?' This is L'Afrance. So did playing this role and living in Paris make Djolof Mbengue think about his own situation? His answer is philosophical. "Life is like a bottle" he says. "When you are born it is empty, but as you grow older the bottle fills up. The question for the character I play in the film is, where did the bottle fill up? Was it as a child growing up in Senegal? Or was it when he moved to Europe?" He continues, "So that's the real question we have to ask ourselves. Where did we really grow up as opposed to where was I brought up? And it is important to reply to this question honestly". |
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