Banel & Adama

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1:36

Banel & Adama

2024

1h 27m

Drama

Romance

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Popcornmeter

95%

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41 Reviews

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. The young couple lives in a remote village in northern Senegal. For them, nothing else exists except each other. But for the rest of their tight-knit village, duty dictates that Adama soon accept the role of chief. The two lovers have other plans... until something in the air changes. The rains do not come; the cattle begin to die; the men leave. A rare debut feature that premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and Senegal's official submission to the Academy Awards®, Ramata-Toulaye Sy's Banel & Adama is a lush and lyrical fable that soars to the heights of longing and descends deep into the realm of myth, sending its protagonists' idyllic love on a collision course with their community's customs. Because in this world, there is no room for passion, let alone chaos.

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Critics Consensus

Marrying cultural specificity with lush visuals, this romance marks an impressive debut for writer-director Ramata Toulaye Sy.

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Manohla Dargis

New York Times

Jun 11, 2024

... You remain engaged but also find yourself wishing that all these many desperate pieces fit together more coherently.

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Glenn Kenny

RogerEbert.com

Jun 7, 2024

3/4

The directorial debut of French-Senegalese filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy, this is one of those pictures to which the phrase “every frame a painting” might apply.

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Diego Semerene

Slant Magazine

Jun 3, 2024

2.5/4

In the end, Banel & Adama is most memorable when it forgets to push the story forward and wallows in the painterly, or allegorical, registers of its images.

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Lucy Sternbach

Screen Slate

Aug 25, 2026

Sy uses ambiguity to instill complexity in a narrative about the plight of a small village in the African desert, which would ordinarily be considered a universal story.

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Clotilde Chinnici

Loud and Clear Reviews

Sep 14, 2024

3.5/5

Banel & Adama is a powerful film with beautiful and lyrical visuals that work to support its strong social themes, making it a particularly remarkable movie.

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Dennis Harvey

48 Hills

Jul 18, 2024

[It] seems a somewhat reactionary story about a bossy, arrogant woman whose refusal to accept "her place" brings ruin. Still, the lyricism of Sy's presentation, and the alluringly rich, delicate color palette here, lend her movie an intriguing ambiguity.

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Runa R

@runa.r May 23, 2025

A film from Senegal — how wonderful. If it is often difficult even for countries in the wealthy European Union to get their films shown in commercial cinemas, imagine how much more challenging it must be for African countries with fewer resources. It’s true — as I read online — that the film was made possible thanks to an international arrangement involving public and private funding from France, Senegal, Mali, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. This kind of cinema is a real breath of fresh air: it offers us realities that are profoundly different from those I, as a Westerner, am used to seeing in mainstream cinema. It’s a beautiful and sensitive film.

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Daniel B

@observor May 20, 2025

Very mysterious movie with the interesting setting of a Senegalese village. Good if you like exotic romance

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Mamadou Diallo

Adama

Binta Racine Sy

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Banel et Adama: Trailer 1

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Synopsis

Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. The young couple lives in a remote village in northern Senegal. For them, nothing else exists except each other. But for the rest of their tight-knit village, duty dictates that Adama soon accept the role of chief. The two lovers have other plans... until something in the air changes. The rains do not come; the cattle begin to die; the men leave. A rare debut feature that premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and Senegal's official submission to the Academy Awards®, Ramata-Toulaye Sy's Banel & Adama is a lush and lyrical fable that soars to the heights of longing and descends deep into the realm of myth, sending its protagonists' idyllic love on a collision course with their community's customs. Because in this world, there is no room for passion, let alone chaos.

Director: Ramata-Toulaye Sy
Producer: Éric Névé, Maud Leclair, Andrey Samoute Diarra, Margaux Juvénal, Souleymane Kébé, Oumar Sy
Screenwriter: Ramata-Toulaye Sy
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Production Co: La Chauve Souris, Astou Films, arte France Cinéma
Genre: Drama, Romance
Original Language: French (France)
Release Date (Theaters): Jun 7, 2024, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Aug 6, 2024
Box Office (Gross USA): $48.7K
Runtime: 1h 27m

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