<\/p>\n
A crowd streamed out of a major Dakar cinema on a recent Tuesday night after watching Senegal’s movie of the summer: a book adaptation with no special effects or Hollywood stars that nonetheless has taken box offices by storm.<\/p>\n
Director Angele Diabang’s film “So Long a Letter”, a film based on one of Senegal’s best-known novels, spent the last few months battling the likes of “Jurassic World: Rebirth”, “F1” and “Superman” for cinematic dominance in Dakar — and climbed its way to the top.<\/p>\n
For a French-language movie about polygamy, female friendship and the place of women in west African society, its success was not a given.<\/p>\n
At Pathe Dakar, where it debuted, “So Long a Letter” (“Une si longue lettre”) remained at the top of the box office throughout July and August, Diabang said.<\/p>\n
With many African countries having no more than one or two cinemas that screen new releases, each box office count is meaningful.<\/p>\n
In Senegal, where there are approximately five such cinemas, all in the capital, “So Long a Letter” screened at two of the biggest.<\/p>\n
That the movie could beat out multi-million-dollar franchises with Senegalese audiences was “truly a wonderful surprise”, Diabang, 46, told AFP from her Dakar office.<\/p>\n
Her movie, she said, provides proof that “a film with entirely Senegalese — African —\u00a0content can really draw so many viewers, can succeed even against American blockbusters, even though the budgets are completely different”.<\/p>\n
“So Long a Letter”, a 1979 epistolary\u00a0novel by author Mariama Ba, tells the story of Ramatoulaye Fall, a woman who is blindsided when her husband takes a younger, second wife.<\/p>\n
In a series of letters to a friend, Ramatoulaye reflects on her life’s path, in a tale with multiple themes including the conflict between tradition and modernity.<\/p>\n
– ‘Make it work’ –<\/p>\n
The film has now hit 16 cinemas across French-speaking Africa, a significant number given the few theatres.<\/p>\n
It has been seen by several thousand people in Senegal and nearby countries, Diabang said.<\/p>\n
At its first showings in Ivory Coast and Guinea in late August, “So Long a Letter” packed theatres with giddy crowds.<\/p>\n
On social media, viewers dissected the movie down to where one might buy the characters’ outfits.<\/p>\n
And on a recent, sleepy Tuesday evening, several dozen spectators exited Pathe Dakar, a sizeable crowd for a movie out two months.<\/p>\n
“It’s the movie of the summer,” said Adji Ndimo Ndiaye as she left.<\/p>\n
People are talking about it “on social media, you log in, you see it, on posters, billboards, everywhere”, the 29-year-old office manager said.<\/p>\n
While most African movies debut at major festivals in Europe, Diabang’s film first appeared at a New York festival and the FESPACO Pan-African festival in Burkina Faso.<\/p>\n
Unable to find a distributer in France, she pivoted to a Senegalese company and a local debut.<\/p>\n
Determined that her small-budget film which took 12 years to make would not come out on television, Diabang said she decided “to work on good communication with a very young distribution company”.<\/p>\n
“We said to ourselves: Let’s try to make it work in Senegal,” Diabang, who has produced and directed some 20 films, said.<\/p>\n
Following its regional success, her new goal is to see it released in France and beyond.<\/p>\n
– Multiple themes –<\/p>\n
The appeal of “So Long a Letter”, according to its fans, is the enduring nature of its central themes.<\/p>\n
Polygamy, for example, is still pervasive in Senegal, where both the president and prime minister have two wives.<\/p>\n
Then, “there’s friendship, there’s couples, there’s how to build a strong nation, there’s women’s education, there’s sisterhood, there’s castes”, Diabang said.<\/p>\n
Theatregoer Nadia Nourdini, a 26-year-old from Cameroon, said that “the subject is polygamy, but for me, what stood out the most in the film was friendship”.<\/p>\n
For many, a devotion to the original book is also part of the appeal.<\/p>\n
“I think they are transferring their love for the novel into the film,” Diabang said.<\/p>\n
“That’s why I didn’t abandon the film” despite the dozen years it took to make it, she added.<\/p>\n
“I knew there was this emotion, people are attached to the book, are attached to multiple themes which are in the movie, which are important.”<\/p>\n
bfm\/giv<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A crowd streamed out of a major Dakar cinema on a recent Tuesday night after watching Senegal’s movie of the summer: a book adaptation with no special effects or Hollywood stars that nonetheless has taken box offices by storm. Director Angele Diabang’s film “So Long a Letter”, a film based on one of Senegal’s best-known […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2020646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[371281,371283,371282],"class_list":["post-2020645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-angele-diabang","tag-dakar","tag-senegal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Angele-Diabangs-Hollywood-defying-Senegalese-hit.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2020646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}