Adama (French May 2016)

This is a coming-of-age story of 12-year-old West African boy Adama in animation. The use of 3D for characters, which are clay sculptures, imbues the animation with realism. Adama’s big brother Samba loves freedom and is good at diving. In his ritual of initiation, the elders stop the ceremony due to a bad omen. Defying the elders’ warning that what lies beyond the cliffs are chaos and vanity, Samba goes beyond the cliffs and becomes a mercenary for gold. To take his brother back, Adama leaves his village, stows away on a ship, and throws himself on the battlefield of WWI in 1916. Looking back to the past from a century later, the animation reflects on colonization, slavery, and Africans’ sacrifice in WWI.