Projects in development
PRINCESSE TÉNÉ
Synopsis
Ouagadougou. Téné, queen of the night, inherits the family stables after the death of her father. While at first she’s determined to sell the horses, she finds a way to make some fast cash by using them as mules to traffic drugs for Auntie Dollar. Alongside her ascent as a criminal, Téné finds herself rehabilitating the family reputation by restoring the horses to their former glory. Much of the money she makes goes toward caring for the animals, and she gets closer to Harmonica, her father's faithful companion, and Princess, his mare. While she relishes her success, her brother is killed at the front. Téné refuses to continue trafficking when she discovers Auntie Dollar is selling the drugs to the terrorist group responsible for her brother's death. Wanting to put an end to it, Téné challenges Auntie Dollar to a duel.
Director’s statement
With Princesse Téné, I want to make visible a community that is at the heart of a nation’s identity. In their heyday, the cavalry were the army of the chiefs. They paraded, performed acrobatics, and the breath of their mounts blessed newborns. Sadly, their way of life has changed and is threatened by rapid urbanization. This film was born of the desire to pay tribute to them, in the manner of Jordan Peele's latest film, Nope, which rescues the African-American cowboy from erasure. I want to root the universe of these horsemen, with all its mythological implications, in a modern urban Western, in which spirituality blends with everyday life. Princesse Téné is about revenge, overthrowing power, and tragic love. Rooted in the Burkinabè imaginary, it draws on the codes of the gangster film, the Western, and the family drama, in a nation in the midst of a political and security crisis.
Biographies
Born in Paris to a Burkinabè director father, Fabien Dao studied in the sound department at La Fémis, where he directed his first short film, The Caiman from Boromo (2016), which was followed by It Rains on Ouaga (2018). He completed a trilogy of films about his father's life with Bablinga (2019), which was named Best Drama at the Aspen Shortsfest in 2020.
Moustapha Sawadogo is a producer based in Ouagadougou, and an alumnus of the 2018 EAVE Production Training Program. He has produced and collaborated on numerous films and series, including Dao Abdoulaye and Éric H. Lengani’s The Scavengers and Moussa Sène Absa’s Black and White. Since 2021, he has been in charge of Fespaco's Yennenga Workshops (Academy and Post-Production).
