Trouble Sleep
SYNOPSIS
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There is a type of cinema that approaches the city not as a setting but as a subject. Alain Kassanda fits into this tradition with Trouble Sleep, where the intertwined stories of Fred—a recent graduate making a living as a taxi driver—and Akin—a transport union worker—are just a glimpse of the multitude of constellations (identity-based, historical, and political) at the heart of Ibadan, Nigeria. A free-spirited portrait of a city that, as the Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau would say, is “the bottlelock where all our stories come together [...] a place the world gives you, like it gives air.” DANIELA URZOLA
BIOGRAPHY
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Born in Kinshasa, Alain Kassanda left the DRC to emigrate to France at the age of 11. After studying communications, he has devoted himself to organizing film series at various Parisian cinemas. From 2015 to 2019, he was a programmer at an arthouse cinema in Paris, before moving to Ibadan, in southwestern Nigeria, where he directed *Trouble Sleep*, which won the Golden Dove for Best Film at the Dok Leipzig festival in 2020 and received a Special Mention from the jury at the Visions du réel festival. This was followed by Colette and Justin, a feature film that intertwines his family history with the history of the decolonization of the Congo. Coconut Head Generation, his third film, which focuses on students in Nigeria, won the Grand Prize at Cinéma du réel.
