Director: Manthia Diawara
Production: Jürgen Bock,
Lumiar Cité/Maumaus
Assistant Producer: Carlos Alberto Carrilho, Lumiar Cité/Maumaus
Camera: Alpha Yahyah Suberu, Thim Naccache, Thomas Wilke, Mansita Walu Diawara
Sound: Michael Kurz,
Bertrand Vigier
Editing/Archival Research:
Kenan Akkawi
Archivist: Tania Georgoupli
Country: Portugal
Year: 2017
Runtime: 70’

HD Video, colour, sound
Languages: English, French
Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Polish

With Alexander Kluge, Fatou Diome, Nicole Lapierre, Richard Sennet, Agnès Barad-Matrahji.

Commissioned by documenta 14, Athens / Kassel.

Produced by Maumaus/Lumiar Cité with core funding from Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, ZDF/3sat and documenta 14

An Opera of the World is based on Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, which narrates an eternal immigration drama. The opera, filmed in Bamako in 2007, serves as a mirror for Diawara to build an aesthetic and reflexive story, through song and dance, about the current and yet timeless drama of emigration between North and South. The film ponders about the realities of cultural encounters through the concepts of métissage and hybridity. The success and limits of fusing African and European perspectives are tested by interlacing performances from Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, past and present archival footage of migrations, classic European arias and interviews with European and African intellectuals, artists and social activists.