SENEGAL: KOURTRAJME OPENS ITS FIRST FILM SCHOOL IN AFRICA

Could this be the start of a successful script being written in Africa? It is this dream that prompted the famous French director Ladj Ly and the French collective Koutrajmé to open the first free film school in Dakar.
It is the story of a trusting young man who, after being unfaithful to his fiancée, goes to consult a genius to cover up his act. This is how he receives five coris and shells from the genius in order to erase his mistakes. It’s up to him to put them into practice…

This scenario is imagined by Kine Niang. She is a young woman of 30, who is one of the students who started the courses in the specialization of screenwriters at the Kourtrajmé school.
After that of Montfermeil in the Parisian suburbs, the school is the third to open its doors. In 2018, Ladj Ly realized the dream of paying tribute to the precarious neighborhood where he had grown up and began by filming the urban violence of 2005.

Since then, another school has been inaugurated in Marseille with the same dedication to offer without distinction training in the cinema and audiovisual profession.
In 2018, when he opened Montfermeil, Ladj Ly edited the long version of the short film « LES MISERABLES ». He was already thinking of Africa for a school; where his Malian parents are from, with whom he has strong ties. The notoriety he received thanks to the success of ¨MISERABLES¨ did not divert him from his origins.

It is in a professional building that the school has been converted into a cultural space located near the capital and it is the first in Africa. He has several projects established on the continent.
Co-founder in 1995 of the film collective Kourtrajmé and co-director of the school, Ladj Ly and Toumani Sangaré do not hide the fact that their first African teaching could have happened in Mali in their country. The torment the country faced did not allow it.
The period was complicated with the pandemic. Raising the funds and bureaucratic problems hampered the venture.
Despite his notoriety, he says that creating free schools open to all remains difficult.
In February 2021, the artist and his brother were arrested after an investigation in France for breach of trust and money laundering targeting the association that oversees the school.
Essence of the trade. After the investigation Ladj Ly talks about attempted sabotage and nonsense written by a former employee. The important thing is the existence of the school and the progress of the project. Montfermeil; Marseilles; currently Dakar and soon Madrid…

Senegal occupies an important place in audiovisual production, particularly in series, says co-director Sangaré. They should be 14 young Senegalese to do the training for five months. After the selection of student screenwriters, the school will train 18 apprentice directors in June. A year after her selection, Kine Niang, an apprentice screenwriter who was about to start an internship, was recalled. Passionate about writing, she saw that it was an opportunity that she should not miss. The lesson began with the question why do you write? Tell their trainer; Dialika Sané a screenwriter. The answers were diverse, but the important thing is that he all understood the job of the screenwriter, which is to show on the screen what cannot be said by other means.

Sandrine Ndoumbe