Boubacar SANGARÉ,Burkina Faso
Sékou Timité has one ambition: to follow in the footsteps of a father he never knew and become a Djeli, a griot—one of the guardians of oral memory in West Africa. As the only member of his family interested in the fading art of the griot, he leaves his family and his Malian village behind to explore the world along the legendary routes of the Manding Empire.
Torn between his dreams of greatness, the material needs of his family, and the long journey of learning, he faces the challenges of a sometimes chaotic present. Along the way, he encounters some of the greatest griots in the region as well as ordinary individuals grappling with daily life.
His journey of initiation becomes a poetic portrait of a West Africa searching for its shared memory.