ArtMattan Productions is pleased to announce the acquisition of Khady Syllla's The Silent Monologue/Le Monologue de la Muette, co-directed with Charlie Van Damme, a 45-minute visual and poetic analysis of the life of maids in Senegal reminiscent of Ousmane Sembene's classic Black Girl.

The Silent Monologue follows the life of Amy who, at a very young age, is sent to Dakar to work for a Senegalese family. In Black Girl, Ousmane Sembene zoomed on the life of a Senegalese maid working for a white French family in Senegal and France. Khady Sylla does not leave her native Senegal and the team behind the camera gives us a very incisive analysis of an African society, its casts and class issues and the unfulfilled dreams of independence.

The Silent Monologue is a film that goes beyond the slogan Africa for Africans to promote the notion of a better Africa for all Africans. As in Black Girl, the maid is mainly silent. But here, we hear a persistent monologue that Amy has in her head as she goes about performing the daily tasks of her daily life reflecting on the ills of a contemporary Senegalese society.

With a combination of documentary and theatrical mise en scene, the authors give Amy a voice that is the voice of a woman in one of the lowest echelons of society, however capable of a lucid analysis of her human conditions and that of her peers.

The Silent Monologue is a political film, a combative film and a film rooted in the artistic tradition displayed in the work of other Senegalese authors such as, Ousmane Sembene, Djibril Diop Mambety and Safi Faye.

The Silent Monologue is the second film by Khady Sylla distributed by ArtMattan Productions.

In her other film, Colobane Express, we observe 24 hours in the daily life of drivers and passengers of the public vans in Dakar.