Le voyage de Talia

Spoken: Arabic / Subtitles: Dutch

Talia is a 19 year old woman, who travels to her ancestral home in Senegal for the first time to connect with the extended family she's never met. Staying in a luxury villa with her rich cousin Binta who is dreaming of Europe, she feels herself as in prison. She wants to meet her grandmother. By chance she meets Malika, a street seller who show Talia a different city to the one she'd imagined, making her questioning her own identity and role within this new world. Both decide to go and search for Talia's grandmother living on the countryside. It is a the confrontation of a Belgo-African with the reality of Africa she didn't know.

The film is preceded by a short animated film:
On the Surface (2022, Fan Sissoko, Iceland, Mali. 4 min, spoken: English)

A young Malian woman goes swimming in the Icelandic sea and relives her traumatic pregnancy. She reflects on her experience of raising her child in a country that does not feel like home.