Catching Up With Tribeca Fest ‘22 and ABFF 2022 Award Winner, ‘Our Father, The Devil’ Director Ellie Foumbi
Very recently, director Ellie Foumbi had the dubious honor of not only having her debut feature length film “Our Father, The Devil” play at the 2022 Tribeca Festival and at the 2022 American Black Film Festival during the same time period, but she also walked away with awards from both events. At Tribeca, the film was named Best Narrative Feature at the Audience Awards and at ABFF, the film won the John Singleton Best First Feature and Best Narrative Feature Jury Award.
Written and directed by Foumbi, the cast includes Babetida Sadjo, Souleymane Sy Savané, Jennifer Tchiakpe, Franck Saurel, and Martine Amisse.
Marie Cissé (Babetida Sadjo) works as the head chef at a retirement home in small-town France. Her easy day-to-day life spent caring for residents, hanging out with her co-worker and best friend Nadia, and teasing a potential new romance is disrupted by the arrival of Father Patrick (Souléymane Sy Savané), an African priest whom she recognizes from a terrifying episode in her homeland. As he further endears himself to the residents and staff, Marie is forced to decide how best to deal with this reminder of her troubled past.
Foumbi received her MFA in Directing from Columbia University and has had her previous works (short films) shown at Venice, HollyShorts, and Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Prior to its festival showing at the Tribeca and ABFF, Blackfilmandtv.com caught up with the Cameroon, West Africa native as she spoke about the making of her feature length film.
What was the attraction to taking on the project?
Ellie Foumbi: Well, it started with my dad’s work. I got access to some Rwandan survivors through his work at the UN. In talking with them and hearing about how they were piecing their lives back together, I became really interested in diving into trauma around Civil War, and really wanting to explore how it's possible to rebuild your life after such a traumatic event. One thing that kept coming up was how many children were actually perpetrating a lot of the violence. It's very common during conflict in various spheres of countries that children are often recruited to do the most terrific things.
And so that’s how I turned my attention to child soldiers and wanting to explore who they became after the conflict. I saw that there weren't really any films about that. A lot of films were mostly about the conflict itself, and how the children were recruited, but no one really talks about who these kids become afterwards, and are they able to piece their lives back together? How do they move forward? How do they start again, and I turned the focus on that, specifically, based upon those talks that I had initially with Rwandan farmers.
Now midway, the character changes gears as far as what she's telling herself to be, and it's almost like she had this latent responsibility to turn back this clock on this priest without spoiling it away. Was that always the thought process towards how she would respond when she saw him?
Ellie Foumbi: Yeah, I mean I really just tried to put myself in her shoes. If I had seen someone 20 years later and it has been a very long time and I think there's also an element of this is someone that she knows intimately. One thing when I was researching rape survivors there are certain things that stay engraved in the memory. It can be someone's voice, it can be a smell, it can be anything and I defined it for her that it was his voice that was seared into her brain and so even though she's not 100% sure, in her gut she's sure it's him. I built it out from there. She hears him, she sees him, she feels like it’s him, but then she has to manage that and everything evolves based on what he's doing. So, I wanted it to really develop in a very organic way and a lot of what I found through workshopping the script with the actors was trying to find the choices that make the most sense dramatically. I had more layers in working with Babetida Sadjo and Souléymane Sy Savané.
Then there's also the nature of three other sub plots within that. There's a relationship with her mentor. There's a romantic relationship and then there's a relationship with her coworker. Putting all of that into perspective outside of the main plot, how did you decide to leave that in there without losing focus of what the initial plot is?
Ellie Foumbi: That's such a good question | was trying to think about ways to humanize Marie and the ways to show what’s at stake for her really. Part of that was really understanding her relationship before Father Patrick arrived. The ways in which she hides things from the people that are closest to her and I really needed those two characters: Nadia's character (her best friend) and Shai (the mentor) who's in her retirement home and obviously the love interest. I wanted to show how far behind she was socially. That's how I developed the relationship with the three characters and introwork the layer of her relationship to those characters when it's based on how everything was evolving with Father Patrick. Specifically with the love interest because it’s really connected to her femininity and that sense of powerlessness. A lot of rape victims disconnect from their bodies and so I wanted to visualize that through her relationship with the bartender, who is constantly making advances towards her and her inability really to open up to men. It’s a tricky balance but working with Babetida, we were able to find the balance that felt right and that also helped me advance the story forward with what's going on in the cabin with Father Patrick.
Now when you're working with those actors that are playing the leads, did you talk to them as far as how to work within the research that you've done so that they are not so conflicted after they finish leaving the set? Some people can work "okay yeah I’m doing my role and I'm going to go on with my life” or it stays with them for a little bit. This is a heavy subject to deal with.
Ellie Foumbi: It is a heavy subject. This was a tough one... I think that especially for Souléymane, because he's such a good guy and has a good heart. It’s especially challenging to step into the shoes of someone who had done something so horrific. But I think that there was so much love on set and the entire crew was very conscious of what a heavy emotional uplift this was for the cast. Especially for Babetida and Souléymane. They really stepped in to care for them and that helped a lot but for Souléymane it wasn't easy walking away from this role. I think for Babetida as well if you were to ask both of them. They have spoken about this a little bit about how they carry these characters with them. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. We’re paying homage to the stories of people that are subtly told and so there is a sense of responsibility and I think it’s an honor to be able to carry that.
Having done this and it’s now playing at festivals like Tribeca & ABFF and some reviews are out, what did you learn in the process from having completed this and reading what other people thought that will help you out with your next project?
Ellie Foumbi: Oh man! The reviews have been just astounding! I'm really touched, and it's amazing too. During the Q&A at the premiere, it’s incredible how much people pick up in all the layers and things. Sometimes you don't know what's going to go over people’s head, you don't know what people will latch on to or connect to or pick up on. The thing that surprises me the most is just how much the feedback has been incredible and for me it's just a push. It’s a push to keep going. It’s a push to continue to create such challenging stories, to tell the stories that dare me. It’s an encouragement to keep going and I'm hoping that financiers and producers out there who are inquiring about working with me and I'm hoping that this is a sign to them that I have a voice and I have something to say and that my stories, the stories that I'm developing are worth telling.
Do you know what you're planning next? Or are you just soaking this in for now?
Ellie Foumbi: I do know, I mean I've been developing Zenith, a story about a Black woman that was adopted into a Mennonite community and I've been developing it for several years now. It's gone through many labs and is one of the projects that was selected for Untold Stories here in Tribeca in 2019 and I'm actually diving back into that and finding a new way to bring that story to light. That's definitely in the works and then there's a book that I'm in the process of adapting that I love but can't really talk about just yet. There's some really interesting projects that I'm working on that are coming up, including a new western that I've written as well.