The Revolution Won’t Be Televised

When Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade tried to run for office again in 2011, resistance formed on the streets. Soon after a group of school friends, including the rappers Thiat and Kilifeu, founded the movement "Y'en a marre" ("We're fed up"), the filmmaker Rama Thiaw joined them - and started documenting the events from an "insider perspective": meetings, campaigns, arrests, concerts, states of exhaustion, journeys. Over several years, a stirring portrait of a youthful protest movement emerged, to which even independent observers have attributed the role of "kingmaker" in the election. Thiaw shows the rappers and their environment from close-up, providing a space and framework for the delicate conflicts between music and politics, street and state with cinematographic finesse. (Dorothee Wenner)