Banel & Adama is a powerful film with beautiful and lyrical visuals that work to support its strong social themes, making it a particularly remarkable movie.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 14, 2024

[It] seems a somewhat reactionary story about a bossy, arrogant woman whose refusal to accept "her place" brings ruin. Still, the lyricism of Sy's presentation, and the alluringly rich, delicate color palette here, lend her movie an intriguing ambiguity.

| Jul 18, 2024

Sy has succeeded in combining poetry with social critique in a haunting, beautiful film.

| Jul 12, 2024

A powerful and poetic debut feature, Banel & Adama signifies Sy as an exciting young artist to watch in world cinema.

| Jul 9, 2024

A poetic and beautifully shot film about obsessive love and the trouble that often comes from getting what you want, at any cost.

| Jul 9, 2024

tragedy of mythic proportion escalates. Desire faces the world; the world looks back. Lovely and lyrical even as the bravura filmmaking outstrips the contours of the story.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jul 4, 2024

... You remain engaged but also find yourself wishing that all these many desperate pieces fit together more coherently.

| Jun 11, 2024

The resulting effort is a flawed yet impressive exhibition of the trials that occur when choosing between self-gratification and communal honors.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 10, 2024

Despite an ambiguous ending, the evocative film resonates with bittersweet compassion as it chronicles Banel’s quest for empowerment and self-worth.

| Jun 7, 2024

The directorial debut of French-Senegalese filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy, this is one of those pictures to which the phrase “every frame a painting” might apply.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 7, 2024

In exploring this relationship, Banel & Adama questions if love and freedom are even possible amidst a stringent belief in tradition.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 7, 2024

A capable, often visually striking feature directorial debut from Ramata-Toulaye Sy.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 7, 2024

An impressive debut for writer-director Ramata-Toulaye Sy, a Paris-born daughter of Senegalese immigrants who spent time in Dakar and was obviously appalled by the nation’s antiquated adherence to gender roles.

| Original Score: B | Jun 7, 2024

Sy creates an intoxicating, woozy atmosphere that sucks you into this hermetically-sealed community, which remains beguiling even as she doesn’t explore many themes surrounding her dark relationship drama with enough depth.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 4, 2024

In the end, Banel & Adama is most memorable when it forgets to push the story forward and wallows in the painterly, or allegorical, registers of its images.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 3, 2024

Proves that a languid, dreamy approach doesn't mean that a narrative lacks power

| Original Score: 4 | Jun 2, 2024

The film richly blends Senegalese traditional structures against this expression of modernity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 23, 2024

Love blossoms and withers in a drought-stricken village in Ramata-Toulaye Sy's tragic, Shakespearean romance.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 23, 2024

Despite its flaws, Banel & Adama is an impressive, ambitious debut from Sy, who directs the film with rare clarity and peacefulness.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 12, 2024

First-time filmmaker Ramata Toulaye-Sy’s (co-screenwriter of Seventh Row favourite Our Lady of the Nile) story of star-crossed lovers in a remote village in Senegal is a visually stunning tale of bucking convention and paying the price.

| Mar 22, 2024