The 28th edition of the African Film Festival ended on 4 March in Ouagadougou, with the triumph of the film by young Tunisian director Youssef Chebbi. The young director, born in Tunis in 1984, won the Golden Stallion of Yennenga for his film "Ashkal".
Welcoming “extreme rigor” and “work that is out of the ordinary”, the president of the jury, Dora Bouchoucha (Tunisia), specified that the Gold Stallion had been awarded to Youssef Chebbi unanimously. Selected for the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in France, "Ashkal" also won the Golden Antigone, the highest award at the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival in 2022.
Synopsis of "Ashkal": in Tunisia, in the gardens of Carthage, a new district where modern constructions are juxtaposed with abandoned building sites and vacant wastelands, the body of a guard is found burnt in the middle of a building site. Batal, a cop in his fifties, is in charge of the investigation, assisted by his young niece, Fatma, a thirty-year-old woman. The investigators start by questioning the workers of the nearby construction sites but they are far from imagining what really awaits them in this case...
The male and female actors and actresses of the feature film "Under the fig trees" by Tunisian director Erige Sehiri won the male and female acting awards.
Here are the other prizes which were awarded to the Arab World:
- Best editing: "Abu Saddam" by Nadine Khan (Egypt);
- Best Screenplay: "The blue caftan" by Maryam Touzani (Morocco);
- Sound Award: "Ashkal" by Youssef Chebbi (Tunisia).