Ramata-Toulaye Sy

After study­ing per­form­ing arts with a cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion focus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris Nan­terre and spe­cial­iz­ing in screen­play writ­ing at the Free Con­ser­va­to­ry of French Cin­e­ma, Rama­ta-Toulaye Sy grad­u­at­ed from the screen­writ­ing depart­ment of La Fémis in 2015. She prefers to par­tic­i­pate in writ­ing fea­ture films before launch­ing into direct­ing them, and earned her stripes as a screen­writer on Cagla Zen­cir­ci and Guil­laume Giovanetti’s Sibel (2018), then Atiq Rahimi’s Our Lady of the Nile (2019). In 2021, she decid­ed to move into direct­ing with a first short film, Astel, which was select­ed and award­ed by numer­ous film fes­ti­vals includ­ing the Toron­to Film Fes­ti­val and New Directors/New Films at MoMA in New-York. The film was also pre-select­ed for the 2023 César and won the Spe­cial Jury Prize at the 2022 Cler­mont-Fer­rand Short Film Fes­ti­val. Two years lat­er, the direc­tor is back with a first fea­ture, Banel & Adama. Shot in the Fulani lan­guage, this Sene­galese tale fol­lows a young cou­ple from a small remote vil­lage who come up against the con­ven­tions of their com­mu­ni­ty, and allowed the direc­tor to be select­ed in the Offi­cial Com­pe­ti­tion of the last Cannes Film Festival.