But before that, the film was turned down by all the major film festivals. That left me wondering what had gone wrong. If it worked for audiences and critics in the release, what had held it back with programmers?
Like many of us, I believe that making a film to get into a festival is the wrong approach. But still, filmmakers can benefit from being aware of certain pitfalls with festivals. That's particularly true today when programmers have to think about social advocacy as well as cinematic quality when they consider a film. There's a major emphasis on what kind of stories we should be telling, and who is permitted to tell them.
Here I'd like to share with you the lessons I learned about the current festival environment through my experience of applying to festivals with our film.
Know your character
Night to be Gone stars a non-actor, Omer Cissé, a Black African refugee playing himself in a dramatization of his own life story. In the course of the submission process, I came to understand that the issue with the film was that Omer’s character doesn't fit with the "contemporary norms" at festivals of how a Black refugee should be represented. (All quotes here are from confidential communications with supportive programmers and others involved in festival deliberations.)
When we set out to make the film, Omer's identity as a Black refugee was not my main focus. I met Omer by chance on the street in Berlin, and we developed the story together as a vehicle to faithfully reflect his struggles and how they defined him as a person. I at first suspected the festival reaction to Night to be Gone might also be attributed to my identity as a white filmmaker. But there is little question of cultural appropriation with our film. That's because I did not write the character and then look for a Black actor to play the main role. At the same time, Omer didn't view himself primarily as a refugee or as a victim of racism, and so I didn't either. Instead, I saw him as the intelligent and resourceful survivor that he is. His alter-ego in the movie has these same qualities, but it turned out that was precisely the problem.
For programmers, his identity as a Black refugee was the most important part of his character. For that reason, the film raised certain expectations for them that it did not satisfy. In particular, I was told that they could not understand why Omer's character was not portrayed as part of an "underclass…struggling against oppression." As simplistic as this may at first sound, I now understand the more complex thought behind it. Because Omer is a Black refugee, it made no sense to them that he only implicitly confronts us with that in the film. In addition, since Omer's character was not "focused on his identity" as a Black African refugee or a "fight against racism," the film did not "fit into any category" that would allow it to be selected. For them, Omer's character needed to represent Black people and Black identity more explicitly, or else his ambiguous character would reflect badly on all African refugees.
Omer's real-life background is not typical for an African refugee. He grew up in a prominent family in Mali that could afford to smuggle him onto a direct flight to Germany at the age of 16 after his father's political enemies brutally attacked his parents in their home. Shaped by conflict, loss and exile at a young age, Omer's real character doesn't have much in common with the dramatic representations of refugees we often see. His traumatic experiences as a privileged teenager left him intensely sensitive in some ways but emotionally numb in others. In every respect, he defies practically all preconceived notions about refugees, and had experienced little of the kind of oppression that these programmers wanted to see portrayed.
Although I have no regrets about choosing Omer as the subject of this film, I see now that choosing another protagonist with a similar outsider status would have avoided raising these expectations. For example, we could have cast a Ukrainian refugee in Omer's role. I believe expectations for a morally ambiguous white European refugee would have permitted him to be the person Omer is in the movie without causing any confusion. We could have even still adapted Omer's real story and credited him, but simply cast another actor in his own role. Again, it may sound like replacing the real Omer with an actor from an entirely different background goes too far in changing the story, and in this case I would agree. But since festivals are so crucial for a film's success and a filmmaker's career, I believe at least considering these social advocacy expectations in advance of shooting the film to see if they can be reconciled with your vision is well worth your time.
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Think outside the box
Some programmers who explained to me why the film would not work for their festival also offered me practical advice about how I could "reimagine" the film in a way that would make it more acceptable to their audiences and selection committees. Their suggestion was to recut the movie to make Omer's character a parody of itself so that his character would not reflect his real-life experience. By "breaking the fourth wall," I could turn the film into a kind of Blaxploitation refugee movie that would frame Omer's hustler character as "performative." The film's "ironic distance" from the character would ensure that Omer would not be viewed as "all Black refugees."
I felt that some of these suggestions verged on racist tropes. They suggested I make him childishly "lighthearted and carefree" or an "oddball", in effect turning Omer into something like an African buffoon in blackface. Eventually I understood that was part of their point, to use satire to show how all other representations of refugees could be viewed as racist.
For me there was no question of following this advice, because my aim was not to make a comedy, and in any case Omer himself would never have agreed. Still, I think their response could offer insights for other filmmakers. Their point was that you can tell any story you want as a creative person, but you can also position that story in the current cultural context to maximize its chances for success. With our film it was too late because it was already shot, and the only option left was too extreme for me or Omer to accept.
My advice to other filmmakers is to make these considerations a part of your pre-production process. As an experiment, force yourself to view the story from the perspective of a programmer heavily oriented towards social justice categories to see how it plays. No one is forcing you to do anything you don't want to with your film. Still it could be useful to think through all the options of how you could tell your story that would work for both you and the current zeitgeist. It could really pay off when the movie is done and you're trying to get it out there.
'Night to be Gone' IMDB
Be open to the discussion
Everyone in the film world is now living under a new set of expectations for social content. That puts filmmakers in a difficult position where they themselves may not know if the story they want to tell is in line with those expectations, or if they have the authority to tell it. Putting aside for the moment if this is the way things should be—and I certainly have my own opinions about that—it can't hurt to engage in a dialogue with people who know the answers to these questions. Those discussions can help you form realistic expectations for how your story will be received in the festival world. Without allowing these factors to dictate your vision, you can still avoid unpleasant surprises.
I would also point out that it is not just filmmakers who are confused. Some programmers who turned down our film confided in me that they wished they could have selected it, but were afraid it might fall afoul of certain audiences, journalists, or sponsors at their festivals. They felt they had to make safe choices that wouldn't get them fired. These programmers said they personally supported work that defies categories, but had to balance that against their pragmatic goal of supporting other films they loved by remaining in the festival system.
That leads me to the final question: should the festival world work this way? My own feeling is emphatically not, because in my experience social advocacy unfairly hurt the chances of our film and did nothing to help Omer, who after all really is a Black African refugee who wanted to tell his story. But obviously I am not at all objective after having been through that experience. Either way, the most important thing is that as creative people we should openly discuss and consider these issues, instead of pretending they're not there or avoiding the topic out of fear of saying the wrong thing. I hope other filmmakers can find ways to navigate these landmines and still tell great stories that are authentic and original.
Best of luck to all you, and never give up making great indie films!
'Night to be Gone' IMDB
