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Life in a Spiral
The rise and fall of the famous Gang of 5, the ‘70s stylish gang of drug dealers in Senegal witnessed through the eyes of a photographer.
Lying amid the dust of Dakar is Thiaroye, an over-crowded suburb full of wooden barracks, noisy children, and adults dreaming they’re Clint Eastwood or Pam Grier. One of them, the solitary witch, Malicka, likes to capture the life of her peers in photo. And among these is the Gang of 5, the weed smokers. The gang’s members are Mess; Jimmy the Dice, who would sell his own mother for a hand of poker; DJ Soul, a massive fan of James Brown; Landing Sané, the Dandy; and lastly, the tomboy, Anita. Their muse and inspiration is Yamba, the sorcerers’ marijuana. From the first toke in the morning to the last note at the disco; their days pass like swirls of smoke, living in a spiral. But one day, the national football team is expelled for having sold weed during an international competition. A government decree is immediately published to prohibit the commerce and use of weed. There begin dark days for our friends, the “joints developers”. The only solution their foggy brains can see is to go and fetch the magic weed themselves from its native soil in Casamance, 300 miles from Thiaroye.
For as long as I can remember, I have always dreamt of making a gangster film. I would even prefer to make a gangster movie than be president of Senegal. Even during my first day studying Economics at the Sorbonne University, I knew that my true place was somewhere else, behind a camera and alongside my childhood heroes. Life in a Spiral is set up like a novel of initiation. It depicts the meteoric life of weed dealers in Senegal and the story of a bunch of mates from their togetherness to separation, completed with the dark and sinister side of the country: whorehouses, corrupt church ministers, bent cops and judges, wild French expats looking as lost as three hairs on a bald man’s head. I chose to set it up during the ‘70s to go back to the roots of how my society has become what it is today, exposing the seeds of our collective failures. Although I keep the raw, sex-filled aspects of the book, my female characters are not well-behaved, obedient women. I reject this cliché of black African women shown as superficial, submissive, prostitutes, whom I unfortunately come across in many contemporary films. Life in a Spiral starts out as the story of a male gang and ends as an ode to women.
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