SIRA: Freestyle Debuts Official Trailer For North African Feminist Survival Drama
The official trailer is out for writer/director Apolline Traoré’s new film, Sira. Starring Nafissatou Cisse, Mike Danon, and Lazare Minoungou, Freestyle Digital Media is heading up its U.S. release on VOD and DVD from May 7.
Set in the Sahel region of North Africa, Sira stars Cisse in the title role of a young nomad, who, after a brutal attack, refuses to surrender to her fate without a fight and instead takes a stand against Islamist terror. Thw film is also produced by Traoré and by Denis Cougnaud.
SIRA follows the journey of a beautiful young Peul girl, Sira, and her tribe cross Northern Africa’s Sahelian desert to take refuge in her fiancé’s village. In the middle of the journey, Sira sees her tribesmen violently massacred. After being humiliated by Sira, the chief, Yéré, decides to kidnap her and leaves her for dead in the middle of the desert. Sira is left to face her survival instinct alone. She gradually organizes herself and makes contact with one of the camp’s kidnapped prostitutes, Kemi, who risks her own life for her freedom and Sira’s survival. Meanwhile, her devastated fiancé Jean Sidi doesn’t believe she’s dead and sets out to find her, risking her own life in the process. One distressing situation followed another, and the one last person who helped her to escape is Karim, an undercover soldier. But Sira wants more than just to escape, she also wants revenge.
A box office success hit in French-speaking Africa, Sira was also the official submission of the nation of Burkina Faso for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category of the 96th Academy Awards in 2024. It won the Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama Audience Award for Feature Film, as well as Best Director and Best Sound at the African Movie Academy Awards.
“Every citizen can, in his or her own way, fight terrorism, and the women in my story show self-sacrifice for the common good.” says Traoré. “Countries shaken by all these tragedies must not give in, nor give up. Our responsibility is to defend ourselves, to do whatever is necessary to put an end to the actions of those who want to destroy our countries and the harmony that used to reign in them.”
Freestyle Digital Media negotiated the deal to acquire Sira directly with Cougnaud of Araucania Films and Wide Management, the film’s distributor, in collaboration with Pap Boye and Marco Urizzi.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!