By Miranda Murray and Swantje Stein
BERLIN (Reuters) – For director Abderrahmane Sissako, it was important to show a side of Africa that is not often portrayed on the big screen in his bicontinental tea-obsessed romance “Black Tea,” which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on Wednesday evening.
“It was important for me to think about opening up this gaze. There’s very often a European or eurocentric gaze, as if that was all that made up the world,” the BAFTA-nominated director told journalists ahead of the premiere.
“But there is another world that exists.”
The at times dreamlike film opens on a wedding in the Ivory Coast, as Aya, played by Nina Melo, leaves her groom at the altar and ends up in the well-established African Diaspora community in China’s Guangzhou.
There, Aya falls quietly in love with Cai, the owner of the tea shop where she works, played by Chang Han, as he teaches her the intricacies of the tea ceremony in the shop basement.
“It’s very important to show Africa with a strong, proud figure, because there aren’t enough stories told about Africa, and there aren’t enough good stories told well about Africa,” Sissako said.
However, Melo pushed back against the notion that her character could be considered a stereotypically strong African woman.
“What I liked in Aya is that she’s vulnerable. It’s the vulnerability that makes her so forceful and powerful,” she said.
The Mauritania-born director added that films about Africa suffered from being burdened with cliches that at times proved harmful.
“We’ve had a difficult experience with the West, with those responsible for colonialism, and we are poor as a result of that, and are growing increasingly poor,” said Sissako.
“In a globalised world, Africa needs to open up to others and not be afraid of any partner. There’s China, but there’s not just China.”
(Reporting by Miranda Murray and Swantje Stein; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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