While We Live Wins At Africa Movie Academy Awards

Dani Kouyaté’s While We Live (Medan vi lever), starring Josette Bushell-Mingo and Adam Kanyama, has won Best Film By An African Living Abroad at the 2017 Africa Movie Academy Awards, which were held in Lagos on Saturday.

The movie follows Kandia (Josette Bushell-Mingo), an African women in her fifties who has lived in Sweden for 30 years, and decides to move back to Gambia. Her son Ibbe (Adam Kanyama), who is close to a break through in hip hop, goes with her but their encounter with their homeland doesn’t quite turn out how they had imagined.

Dani Kouyaté said: “It has been interesting to travel the world with this film. Many people are surprised that a film based around this theme comes from Sweden.”

“The search for identity, however, is a universal theme – an individual’s intrinsic roots essentially have little to do with one’s birthplace, and are rather much more connected to the community in which those roots are nourished.”

While We Live was also nominated for Best Actress (Josette Bushell-Mingo), Best Young Promising Actor (Adam Kanyama), Best Supporting Actor (Richard Sseruwagi), Best Screenplay (Dani Kouyaté and Olivier Guerpillon), Best Soundtrack (Andreas Unge), and Best Editing (Philip Bergström).