Rwandan director Mutiganda wa Nkunda, whose debut feature film Nameless won FESPACO’s screenwriting award in 2021, is wrapping up post-production on his follow-up picture. Titled Phiona, A Girl From Madrid, the film is produced by Beninese producer Faissol Gnonlonfin and the director’s own production company, Mutiganda Film Production.
The film is set in Kigali in 2020, where the titular character has just returned to after three years in Madrid, a place described in the official synopsis as a “metaphorical city”. A conversation on the decision to go to Madrid ensues between Phiona and her cousin Yves, and thereafter their relationship is tested.
According to the director, the film was shot in 2021, with a release planned for the following the year. That didn’t happen due to the peculiarities of the project’s production, which was “entirely improvised”. Consequently, the editing process has taken longer than initially projected.
Project development
Nkunda had wanted to edit the film himself with some consulting help supplied by French editor Jacques Comets, who worked on Raoul Peck’s 2000 drama Lumumba “but because I’m not a trained editor, I found out that it was not working,” he said. He then sought an editor to take the work off his hands but that took a substantial amount of time.
Fortunately, he found a good match early last year, after meeting Marianne Haroche, one of two editors behind Disco Afrika: A Malagasy Story, the Berlinale-premiering film from Madagascan director Luck Razanajaona. “From there we started the real editing process which ended in June,” the Rwandan director said, “and then other post-production work started at the Rwanda Media Project, a new post-production training facility that is being set up by the GIZ in Kigali.”
Already, the film has taken its director to the Atlas Ateliers at the 2021 Marrakech International Film Festival. It also received funding from Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Fund and the Jeunes Creation Francophone initiative. Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire, who was in Congolese-Belgian director Baloji’s Augure and in Hollywood picture A Quiet Place: Day One has joined the project as an executive producer. Her involvement is expected to give Phiona, A Girl From Madrid some “reach and visibility in international markets”.
Barring setbacks, Phiona, A Girl From Madrid will premiere at a festival later this year.
