Diya, le prix du sang

Dane, a driver for a humanitarian NGO in N’Djamena, leads a peaceful life with his young wife Delphine, who is expecting a child, until the day he runs over Younous, a 9-year-old schoolboy returning from school. He takes the boy to the hospital, and when he returns the next day for news, he’s told the child has died. Younous’s parents demand five million CFA francs for having killed their son, a sum representing the Dia or blood money, without which they will take the life of a member of his family. Dane is imprisoned and discovers in jail that his father was murdered for refusing to pay the Dia. His village community pools money to pay the Dia. After prison, Dane finds himself unemployed and his marriage threatened; he falls into depression. Consumed by guilt, Dane is obsessed with finding Halimé, the mother of the little Younous he killed, to seek her forgiveness. Following Halimé’s trail, he ends up 800 km from N’Djamena, where he works as a driver in a refugee camp. There he meets Younous, the young schoolboy he thought he had accidentally killed 5 months earlier.

FESPACO 2025: Best Male Performance award for Ferdinand Mbaïssané.