a black and white close-up of a Black woman wearing a silver mask over her eyesalr

Naked Reality

Directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo.
With Weza Da Silva, Luthuli Dlamini, Akin Omotoso.
Cameroon, 2016, DCP, color, 62 min.
DCP source: Filmmaker

Naked Reality is not just a futuristic film from Africa with an incredible cast, powerful images and music. Naked Reality is the cinema of the future.

— Jean-Pierre Bekolo

Wanita leaves her home one morning, unaware that her morning prayer to the ancestors has initiated her journey to Dimsi, the land that cannot be seen. In search of a new identity, Wanita is propelled 150 years into the future, into a world dominated by immortals, where African cities have become gigantic megalopolises. An Afrofuturistic dystopian fable shot in black and white, Naked Reality is a mise en abîme of Jean-Pierre Bekolo's philosophical and aesthetic exploration of his cinematic universe. Moving between fiction and reality, he once again deconstructs the codes of narrative and discourse, using minimalist elements and unconventional settings to further blur the lines. Plunged with the viewers into a future in the grip of an unprecedented energy and health crisis, a young woman navigates a permeable city where she has lost all bearings, an “unfinished” open city in unnerving proximity to our virtual present.

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