Filmed in France, the Dominican Republic and Senegal, Ivan Herrera’s slow-burn drama Bantú Mama tells the story of Emma (Clarisse Albrecht), an everyday French woman of African descent whose life is thrown into turmoil when she is arrested for being a drug mule during a trip to the Caribbean. Escaping custody, Emma goes on the run, hiding out in a rough neighborhood with a family of streetwise kids whose gangster father rules the area from his prison cell. Co-scripted by Herrera and Albrecht, this spare, adult drama avoids the usual clichés of trafficking movies and instead focuses Emma’s self-awakening as she settles into a fragile domesticity while planning her escape.
Speaking at Deadline’s Virtual Screening Series, Herrera explained that the film, from Array Releasing, was intended as a personal journey of discovery.
“Clarisse and I are partners in life,” he said, “and we wanted to do a film that represents us both and tell us a little bit about our own stories, me being an Afro-Caribbean and Clarisse being Afropean. [In the film] we are basically talking about our cultural encounters, because we wanted to write a movie that would represent us and that could honor our ancestors as well.”
Albrecht revealed that the writing process involved “a lot of conversations and brainstorming.” “The first draft was really bad,” she laughed. “Well, not bad, but it was the point we needed to get through in order to get to something way more simple.” This first “bad” draft was full of subplots, extra characters, twists and turns. “There were scenes that Ivan wanted to shoot, and scenes that I wanted to perform, but they were not really making sense. We decided to go for something more simple, more linear, so we could focus on the message and the poetry we wanted to bring out of the story.”
As a result, who Emma really is, where she’s from, and the reasons for her entry into this risky criminal enterprise are all left tantalizingly vague. Said Albrecht, “We really wanted for everybody to assume —according to their own thoughts, or analysis, or judgment — why she did it. We really wanted to maintain this mystery, because [an explanation] would take you out of the story or leave you feeling less close to her.”
See the video above for more insights.
Monica has a BA in Journalism and English from the University of Massachusetts and an MS in Journalism and Communications from Quinnipiac University. Monica has worked as a journalist for over 20 years covering all things entertainment. She has covered everything from San Diego Comic-Con, The SAG Awards, Academy Awards, and more. Monica has been published in Variety, Swagger Magazine, Emmy Magazine, CNN, AP, Hidden Remote, and more. For the past 10 years, she has added PR and marketing to her list of talents as the president of Prime Entertainment Publicity, LLC. Monica is ready for anything and is proudly obsessed with pop culture.
