A look into the little-known story of the birth of African cinema as told through the life of Zalika Souley, the first professional African actress. Once a legendary onscreen "bad girl," Souley worked with celebrated directors including Niger's Oumarou Ganda and Mustapha Alassane in roles that spanned from a horse-riding desperado to a hard-edged prostitute. Souley would go on to become a seminal figure in Post-Colonian African film.

 

Zalika Souley is in her fifties. She lives with four children in a two-bedroom apartment with neither electricity nor water in Niamey, the capital of Niger.

 

But thirty years ago, she was a movie star and Africa’s first professional female actress, working with such celebrated directors as Niger’s Oumarou Ganda and Moustapha Alassane.

 

Souley was once the legendary bad girl of African cinema defying directors with her compelling improvisations. Yet, despite her fame, her life was beset by difficulty.

 

In moving and often heart-breaking interviews, Souley speaks wistfully about how audiences confused her with the women she portrayed – vamps, adulteresses, prostitutes - and how, as her stardom rose abroad, she became a pariah in her own country.

More than a simple chronicle of Souley’s extraordinary career, the film is a moving homage to the heyday of Nigerien cinema in the 1960s when a cottage industry of Westerns, detective films and thrillers delighted audiences.

 

African actors donned cowboy hats and channeled their heroes - Steve McQueen, Jimmy Stewart and Ronald Reagan. AL’LEESSI (meaning "a destiny" in Songhoy) encapsulates the condition of women in modern African society and the history of cinema in Niger which has all but dissolved in recent years.

 

Equally essential for women’s studies, cinema studies, African and post-colonial studies, AL'LEESSI is a love letter to this pioneer of Nigerien cinema and a poignant meditation on the current state of the African film industry.

 

The movie was directed by Rahmatou Keita, a Nigerien, born in Niamey. Rahmatou Keita is a daughter of the Sahel. She is Fulaani, Songhoy and Mandingo.

 

She studied Philosophy and Linguistics in Paris, France. With her dreams of becoming a writer and a filmmaker in mind, she started to work as a journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines and later moving to radio and television as a commentator, hostess, and reporter.

 

From 1987 to 1993, she worked on international television stations and was the first African journalist (including the Diaspora) to appear on French television.

 

She received two coveted "7 d'or" awards for the television magazine's team "L'ASSIETTE ANGLAISE" on the French TV Channel Antenne 2 in 1988 and 1989.

 

In 1993, she wrote SDF, Sans Domiciles Fixe (Lattès 1993), a book about the homeless in France and went on to direct documentary films. AL’LÈÈSSI... AN AFRICAN ACTRESS is her first feature film.