THINK AFRICA PRESS looks at the reaction of Africa audiences to the film and the film’s impact.

WINNER Best Artistic Achievement at the Luxor African Film Festival.

Culture, Conflict, Coming of Age

Interview with the Director,  capturing a culture that is coming of age.

TV5Monde Afrique – the station for 12 Million in 48 countries – featured Grand comme le Baobab (Tall as the Baobab Tree) as part of a special programming event reaching French speaking audiences all over Africa.

Post screening discussion of our film at Columbia University led by an advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General on global education.

 TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE has been translated from the original Pulaar language into English, French, Arabic, Chinese, German, Czech, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Russian Portuguese, and more…Most recently the film has traveled to Lebanon, Sweden, Spain, Gerany, UK, India, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany and Kenya.

Like their characters in the film, Dior and Oumoul are sisters, first-generation students, and have both had their futures shaped by marriage at a young age. Last week, Jeremy Teicher, the director,  returned to the village to visit them. Pictured left, Oumoul (Debo) was put into an arranged marriage and pulled out of school shortly after filming ended in August 2011 — however, she ran away from her husband-to-be’s family and insisted on continuing her education. She is still in school to this day.

Dior, right (Coumba), dropped out of high school during her senior year (just months after shooting) and got married to a man from Mbour (the nearby city). Her first baby came soon after. Dior’s parents were upset that she chose to get married before she finished her high school education. Life often brings unforeseen twists and turns –and often reality is stranger than fiction.

One sure thing is that the honesty and courage these two sisters brought to their roles in Tall as the Baobab Tree is now serving to educate and inspire countless girls around the world.

The US Embassy in Dakar hosted a screening of Tall as the Baobab Tree. Pictured (top) is the cast honored on stage. The reunion has been emotional and tomorrow we go to the village to spend more time with everyone.

Pictured (below) is how it all started over a year ago when Jeremy Teicher (director) premiered his documentary which inspired the feature length movie at the American Ambassador’s residence in Dakar. Grateful thanks to Dartmouth’s  Dickey Center For International Understanding Lombard Public Service Fellowship and a sponsorship from Kodak.

We were thrilled to receive the Children’s Rights Awards from the Osnabruck Film Festival in Germany,  

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Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film — one of the most celebrated annual features in the indie film community has included Jeremy Teicher, director of Tall as the Baobab Tree.

The New York Times  features Tall as the Baobab Tree in the Arts section. Or read it online!

“Conceived as a simple folk tale based on true events and using local, nonprofessional actors, “Tall as the Baobab Tree” — the festival’s closing-night selection — was directed by Jeremy Teicher, an American filmmaker working in the plain neorealist style of Satyajit Ray.”