Niger is secretive, like a veiled woman.
This country is mysterious, but alluring for those who really know it. In Niger, the women are beautiful. And increasingly veiled. Behind the veil they appear dignified, calm, somehow uneventful. Like the country itself, where the flourishing local newspapers rarely report current affairs. As if to suggest there is nothing happening here. Nothing?
What is really going on behind the veil?
Now, as in the past, the veil is an aesthetic unto itself, a complex language, an array of strategies. In its various avatars ? coquettish or austere, classic or Islamically chic ? the veil is worn to conform or to stand out, to hide or to reveal, to elude or to take domestic, religious or social power. It is also worn to dance, to present condolences, and to seduce.
Here, as elsewhere, the veil attracts, repulses, raises questions. Not the veil, but veils, in the multiplicity of their discourses and their silences.

This feature-length HD film, shot in Niger with the impulse of an autobiographical gaze, frames the veil as garment and as metaphor. It explores the private and public strategies of women and the intimate spaces of an unknown world.
The film is constructed around the character of Antoinette Tidjani-Alou, an African woman in her forties, a philosopher and professor of literature, who has lived in Niger over the last 20 years.
Her search for references in the complex codes of Niger, which has adopted her, takes the form of writing. Her journal records an in-depth exploration of the intimate folds of the discourses on the veil in the Niger Sahel, revealing the lives, voices and faces of her contemporaries concealed behind the screen of modesty, ignorance, prejudice and clichés. Antoinette Tidjani-Alou invites us into different life-spaces and introduces us to real and emblematic characters in Niamey who accept to disclose facets of their lives and work.
From the variety of veils, discourses and life-styles emerges a film associating free thought, poetry, testimonies and lived experience. This lyrical work immerses the spectator in the heart of Niger society while engaging a more general reflection on the contemporary meaning of the word "universal". Can a woman be beautiful, veiled and modern? Why is the veiled woman so disturbing for some? Can this fear be overcome by discovering the lives of other people, by seeing their faces as unique and yet familiar in their partaking of the human adventure of the 3rd millennium?

A film by Jean-Marie Teno

Cameroon · Color · 90'

Director''s note
SECRET FACES is born out of a filmmaker and an academic's shared reflection on autobiography. These veil tales exceed the religious; the veil has become a societal issue whose implications expand far beyond the borders of Niger.
By combining two complementary viewpoints - that of a male outsider, the director who accompanies the protagonist, and the latter's, an insider, familiar with this universe of which she offers an analytical, lively and unprejudiced view -this film will broach a range of questions, including freedom and imposed choice. It will thereby encourage viewers to question their certitudes and to open up to the Other in all his/her complexity and humanity.
Open Doors 2012 - Locarno
www.pardolive.ch/en/Open-Doors/film?fid=600240&finit=&dinit=&cinit=&sid=&day=&vid=&eid=65

Directing
Jean-Marie Teno

Production
Les Films du Raphia
17 Rue Paul Doumer
34140, Meze, France
jmteno@yahoo.com

Shooting location
Niamey - Niger

Shooting start date
05/2013

Expected completion date
12/2013

Production status
Writing / Development

Budget
573'622 Euro

Financing in place
2'622 Euro


Production Company''s Profile
In 1987, Jean Marie Teno founded Les Films du Raphia to produce and distribute social issue films. Since 1988 the company has produced the following films by Jean Marie Teno: Sacred Places, The Colonial Misunderstanding, Alex's Wedding, A Trip to the Country, Chief! and many more. The company also produced Si-Gueriki (The Queen-Mother), a film by Idrissou Mora KPAI.


Short Filmography
Clando (1996)
Chief! (2000)
A Trip to the Country (2001)

_____________________

IT
Camerun · Colore · 90'

Regia
Jean-Marie Teno

Produzione
Les Films du Raphia
17 Rue Paul Doumer
34140, Meze, France