Nyola explores the struggles of three generations of women in Angola

The debut of José Miguel Ribeiro “Nayola”, one of two full Portuguese cartoons shown at the Annecy Animation Film Festival, depicts the fate of a grandmother, mother and daughter – Lilena, Nayola and Yara – in the wake of the Angolan civil war.

Nyula searches for her husband, Icombe, who went missing during the war. She gave up her daughter Yara when she was only two years old, who was raised by her grandmother Lilina. By 2011, she had become a rebellious teenage rapper.

The pic jumps back and forth between 1995 and 2011, switching between rich, saturated images of Angolan landscapes and bleak, grayscale images of wartime devastation and urban decay, weaving together real-life settings and dreamscapes.

Based on the stage play “A Caixa Preta” (Black Box) by Angolan playwright José Eduardo Agualusa and Mozambican novelist Mia Couto, the screenplay is written by Virgilio Almeida, longtime Ribeiro collaborator.

The €3.2 million ($3.37 million) pic is a co-production between Portugal’s Ribeiro’s Praça Films, Belgium’s SOIL and Luna Bleu, France’s JPL Films, and Dutch company Il Luster. International sales are represented by urban sales. It has received development support from the Portuguese Film Institute (ICA) and Creative Europe, a €1 million production grant from ICA, support from the Portuguese Cash Discount Scheme and from Eurimages.

Ribeiro spoke to diverse Regarding the movie.

What was the initial inspiration for “Nayola”?

I was introduced to this story by my friend Jorge Antonio, who has been living in Angola for over 20 years. He showed me the play and initially suggested that we make a hybrid film that combines animation and live action. We ended up choosing just the animation. I was already interested in this universe. My father fought in the colonial wars in Africa, more than 50 years ago, leaving a deep imprint on him. He was a sergeant in Guinea-Bissau. The trauma of the war had left a very strong impression on him. He still has trouble sleeping and has a lot of nightmares. One of my first experiences with Africa was when I visited Cape Verde after finishing my short film The Suspect. This inspired me to produce my 2010 animated film A Journey to Cape Verde, and my father’s experience led me to make my 2016 short film Fragments. When I went to Cape Verde, I realized that my vision of Africa was mainly Western and colonial. The media tend to convey vulgar images of the African continent, such as famine and war. When I discovered the generosity of the people and the richness of culture, with a vibrant human dimension, I fell in love with Africa. My desire to be close to my family’s history and my parents meant that when I read “A Caixa Preta” I was immediately drawn to it, and wanted to bring my personal experiences into this project.

What challenges did you face in your first feature film compared to your previous short film?

One of the biggest challenges was working with more people. The manager oversees the basic technical vision but also has to manage different teams. It was very important to me that they all feel part of their project and bring their own vision. For example, editors Ewin Ryckaert from Belgium and Job Terburg from the Netherlands played a vital role in regulating the speed and final chassis. Another major challenge was to ensure the authenticity of the film, as it is set in Angola, while I have lived most of my life in Portugal. During the development phase, I went on an intense two-week trip to Angola in 2014, with my screenwriter Virgilio Almeida and producer Anna Karina. We spent some time in the capital, Luanda, and traveled to remote villages where we talked to people from different tribes. Vírgilio also has family ties to Angola and brought that experience into the scenario. We returned to Angola in 2019 to rehearse with the actors and record the dialogue, which was a very dynamic and creative period in which actresses in particular brought many new ideas.

The film has a strong and eclectic visual style

“Nyula” is primarily a road movie and includes several illustrated universes. One of the most interesting things about the road movie is traveling through different landscapes. This also enabled each of the co-producers, who have so far focused on animated short films, to offer their own vision for the film. Some scenes are more impressionistic, others are more realistic and monochrome. I have always felt that the film needs a visual style that mixes elements of reality and fantasy. I’ve combined images from different settings to give some animation a realistic dimension. We also recorded the exercises with the actors that the designers used during the animation. From the beginning, I wanted to explore a highly expressive style based on my experience in Angola, where you feel the presence of intense colours, like red earth, or blood red sunsets and strong scents. The locals live in close contact with nature. They may see a tree or a stone and see the persistence of someone who has died. In the West, dreams are clearly separated from reality, but in Africa they are interconnected. This duality is especially evident in times of war – as we are seeing now in Ukraine. Souls suddenly turned. You can enter a house or kitchen that has been frozen and abandoned. This creates the kind of fantasy changing space that I wanted to explore in this movie.

Was making a movie about female characters a challenge?

yes! The actresses made a vital contribution to the scenes and dialogue. I asked a Portuguese illustrator, Sousa Monteiro, to supervise the dream sequence, because she had a very distinctive vision that enriches the film. The creative team included several other key female colleagues, such as assistant director, Catarina Calvino Gil, and director of animation Joanna Besser, who oversaw all the animation, layout, and 3D storyboarding.

What is your inspiration for the character of teenage rapper Yara?

This was a major turning point in the development of the film. The idea initially came from the 2015 arrest and imprisonment of rapper Luati Perao and 16 activists accused of plotting a rebellion against President José Eduardo dos Santos. Then I went on hunger strike and they were all eventually released. Accompanied by these events, I realized that I did not want to make a film about the past. I wanted to talk about the main challenges facing Angola today. Medusa was discovered in a YouTube video and asked if she was ready to take on the role of Yara, and she agreed. This gave a missing organic element to the text. Elisangela Rita who plays Nyola is a spoken word artist. Vitoria Soares, who plays Grandma Lilina, is a very experienced actress. They all brought their own vision to the movie and made sure to keep the language and slang used in the movie up to date.

What are your expectations for the movie?

Since I’ve been working on this film extensively for eight years, my main hope is that it gets international circulation! It’s a film above all for an adult audience, but I’m curious to see how teens react to the film, especially in Portugal. I don’t know how they would react to this vision of Angolan culture. Very few things reach us in the West on these subjects. I hope the film offers a window into the rich culture, generosity of the people and the great aesthetic beauty of Angola.