Prize-winning African Short Deals with Social Media Addiction

Written by: Murray Suid

“Je suis Liberté” (“I am Freedom”) has taken the grand prize in the first annual Mobile Film Festival: Africa. Directed by Senegalese filmmaker Marcel Moussa Diouf, the one-minute drama pictures a dying woman who personifies freedom. The woman is surrounded by teenagers who are so engrossed in their smartphones that they don’t notice what’s happening in the real world. Diouf says that using social media “is supposed to be a positive thing, but the teenagers… are no longer interacting with each other.” Social media addiction leads to killing Liberté instead of freeing her. The director received a €10,000 grant ($12,000) for his short film.

About Marcel Moussa Diouf

Marcel Moussa Diouf, 23, grew up in Senegal. After watching Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” Diouf decided to become a filmmaker. A CNN article quotes him as saying, “The internet has taught me everything I know. In 2015, I went on YouTube to learn how to make films. I was initially using my phone to practice, but I later got a laptop from my sister. And with this computer, I organized everything I learned into chapters by taking notes.”

“Je suis Liberté”—his first film—was shot on an iPhone 8. According to MMF rules, the grant money must be used to make another film. That project will be a longer film about homeless children in Nianing, Diouf’s hometown.

About the Mobile Film Festival

Founded in 2005 by Bruno Smadja, the Mobile Film Festival (MMF) is an international Festival of short films, based on a unique and original format: 1 Mobile, 1 Minute, 1 Film. Their aim is to discover and support talented filmmakers from the all over the world. Since 2015, the Mobile Film Festival received 5721 film entries from 151 countries, generated 134 million views and distributed €310,000 grants for production. In 2020, launched a Pan-African edition of the Mobile Film Festival. Fifty-one films from 23 countries were selected in the competition.

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The editors of MobileMovieMaking have chosen ““Je suis Liberté” as the Mobile Movie of the Week.