Ouaga mélodie
2011 · 13m · Burkina Faso
Directed by Uriel Jaouen Zrehen
Tones: contemplative, sensual
A flutist wanders through Ouagadougou while a woman falls; their paths cross in a musical, color-soaked 48-hour tale of an Africa without clichés, where music runs through everything.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Look, a musical drama about Ouagadougou *sounds* like exactly the kind of well-intentioned premise that puts me to sleep, but Jaouen Zrehen somehow makes the flutist and the falling woman feel genuinely strange together—there's a subversive logic to how he refuses sentiment, and that's worth the contrarian's attention.
This is a film acutely aware of its lineage to the French new wave and African cinema traditions alike—the measured pacing, the color palette as formal argument, the way music becomes narrative structure rather than accompaniment—and the rigor of that choice sustains the whole 13 minutes.
The decision to let the flute become the connective tissue between two separate narratives could've been sentimental, but Jaouen Zrehen uses it as pure architecture—the instrument's presence and absence structuring rhythm and emotion with almost no budget waste.
Reviews
Ce film, c'est une histoire, une histoire que Uriel Jaouen Zrehen raconte par le biais du court-métrage, qui fonctionne à merveille, et qui nous désarçonne continuellement : l'Afrique ? Un homme et une femme? Le handicap ? Les clichés nous guettaient pourtant, mais on y voit une Afrique sans violence, avec son décor quotidien, la poussière, les couleurs chaudes, rose, ocre, jaune, turquoise… Une Afrique dans laquelle la musique est partout : le bruit de la foule, une petite musique de flûte qui s'entrelace dans le récit, les chants, et enfin cette mélodie qui court à travers le film…