An Open Window

Director: Khady Sylla

2005 / 52min / DCP

After an unsatisfactory attempt to make a film about the numerous mentally ill people who filled the streets of Dakar back in 1994, Sylla, in her own words “fell ill and crossed to the other side, seeing what others don’t see.” Now “living the experience from the inside,” Sylla produced An Open Window, an empathetic portrait of her friend, Aminta Ngom, suffering under the burden of unspecified emotional disorder, and also a gesture of solidarity through self-exposure by Sylla, who is remarkably forthright about her own struggles, at one point dumping a mountain of prescription drug bottles from her purse on camera. A rigorous, conscientious interrogation of the dynamics between observed and observer, and a film about madness quite unlike any other.

Q&A with Johanna Makabi moderated by Kelli Weston on Saturday, June 14th