Director: Manthia Diawara

Producer: Jürgen Bock

Produced by Maumaus/Lumiar Cité with core funding from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, ZDF/3sat and documenta 14


Country: Portugal
Year: 2017

Runtime: 70’

HD Video, colour, sound

‘An Opera of the World’ is based on ‘Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera’, which narrates an eternal immigration drama. The opera, filmed in Bamako, in 2007, serves a mirror for Diawara to build an aesthetic and reflexive story, through song and dance, about the current and yet timeless drama of emigration between North and South, and refugee crises. The film ponders about the realities of cultural encounters through the concepts of métissage and hybridity. The success and limits of fusing African and European perspectives are tested by interlacing performances from ‘Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera’, past and present archival footages of migrations, classic European arias and interviews with European and African intellectuals, artists and social activists.