Burn It up Djassa

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Published Mar 19, 2014

Filmed in the Abidjan neighbourhood of Wassakara, only a few months before the Ivorian civil war broke out, Burn it up Djassa was a labour of love for a collective of actors, writers and technicians, all of whom come from Wassakara and who have created an engrossing, vérité-style fiction at the very edge of their own lived experience. After his father died, Tony (Abdoul Karim Konaté) was pulled out of school by his mother; and when she passed away, he made his way by selling cigarettes on Princess Street, famous in Abidjan for its bars, dance clubs and exciting nightlife. Now twenty-one-years old, Tony is bitterly convinced that his future has been sacrificed, and is desperate for a way out of the ghetto. His older brother Mike (Mamadou Diomandé) has been considerably luckier, having found a job on the police force, while Ange (Adélaïde Ouattara), their younger sister, is also pursuing respectability by learning to become a hairdresser - but she secretly moonlights as a prostitute in order make ends meet. Looking for easy money, Tony eventually turns to gambling and is dragged further down into the seedy underworld of Wassakara - until he commits a shocking crime that irrevocably changes his life. Now an outlaw, he goes on the run and is relentlessly pursued by the police, his own brother among them. Narrated by a storyteller (Mohamed Bamba) in the Abidjan argot called Nouchi, this compelling crime drama bursts with the eagerness of a generation determined to shape its own destiny and reflect its present in its own distinctive language, music and dance. Burn it up Djassa's raw energy has remarkable staying power and, in spite of the dark tenor of the story, it brims with hope.

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