Man sa yay

I, Your Mother

Forum Special Fiktionsbescheinigung 2023

By the time she produced Man sa yay for German television in 1980, Senegalese auteur Safi Faye had already honed her skills through an impressive suite of projects that reflect on life in her home nation.
Effortlessly fluid in style, weaving together fiction, non-fiction, the essayistic and the epistolary, the film follows Moussa, a young student at Berlin’s Technische Universität. While he does connect with friends and lovers, he is primarily seen alone, working odd jobs, cooking or tidying his apartment. At home is where he reads the letters from family members and his partner in Senegal which structure the film.
At once the centre of the film and a conduit for other lived experiences, Moussa serves to reflect and refract two distinct constellations of social connections. We learn of his loved ones in Senegal (including their wish lists of consumer goods from Europe). Such experiences and desires are mirrored by the sequences of his friends, other West African expatriates making due by hawking “African artifacts” on the street. In each case, we hear the repeated question, laden with longing in some cases, pitched as thinly veiled microaggression elsewhere: “When will you return?”

by Safi Faye
with Moussa J. Sarr, Yay Sokhna, Yvonne Nafi Federal Republic of Germany / Senegal 1980 German, French 59’ Colour

With

Moussa J. Sarr
Yay Sokhna
Yvonne Nafi

Crew

Director	Safi Faye
Screenplay	Safi Faye
Cinematography	Patrick Fabry, Papa Moctar Ndoye
Editing	Hormos Khossoussi
Sound	Gottlieb Benz

Produced by

ZDF

Safi Faye

Born in the village of Fad’jal near Dakar, Senegal in 1943, she worked as a teacher before going on to study ethnology and film in Paris. She made her first short film La passante in 1972. Her prize-winning feature-length debut Kaddu Beykat (Berlinale Forum 1976), is regarded as the first feature film made by a female director from sub-Saharan Africa. In 1979, Faye came to the Freie Universität Berlin for a video workshop and subsequently stayed on in the city with a grant from the DAAD. It was in this period that her ZDF-produced feature film Man sa yay was made.

Filmography

1972 La passante (The Passerby); 10 min. 1976 Kaddu Beykat (Letter from My Village); 97 min. 1979 Fad’jal (Come and Work); 113 min. · Goob na nu (The Harvest Is In); 29 min. 1980 Man sa yay (I, Your Mother); 59 min. 1981 Les âmes au soleil (Souls under the Sun); 27 min. 1982 Selbe et tant d’autres (Selbe: One Among Many); 32 min. 1985 Racines noires (Black Roots) 1989 Tesito; 30 min. 1996 Mossane; 106 min.

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2023