France / 2012 / 85mins / Animation, Romantic Comedy / French

Set against the colorful and spirited backdrop of the Ivory Coast in the 1970s, Aya of Yop City is a vibrant, beautifully animated adaptation of the best-selling series of graphic novels by co-director Marguerite Abouet. Aya is 19, and she loves her neighborhood of Yop City in Abidjan, where everyone knows each other. It’s always lively, with open markets, colorful fabrics, funky cafés and music everywhere. Her mom Fanta is the neighborhood’s most trusted healer. Her dad is a sales rep for a brewery, and certainly gets his fill of the product. While Aya has dreams of becoming a doctor, her two best friends, Adjoua and Bintou, just like to hang out and spend their evenings dancing, drinking and flirting with boys. Their ambition is to follow Plan C: Combs, Clothes and Chasing Men! But big trouble comes to town when Adjoua realizes she’s pregnant, and the baby’s father is the spoiled son of one of the richest and most feared men in the whole country. How can he possibly tell his old man?

Marguerite Abouet

Marguerite Abouet was born in 1971 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in Western Africa. She grew up during a time of great prosperity in the Ivory Coast. At the age of twelve, she and her old brother went to stay with a great-uncle in Paris, where they further pursued their education. Years later, after becoming a novelist for young adults, Abouet was drawn to telling the story of the world she remembered from her youth. The result was the graphic novel Aya de Yopougon, published in North America as Aya, illustrated by Clemént Oubrerie, that recalls Abouet's Ivory Coast childhood in the 1970s, and tells the humorous, engaging stories of her friends and family as they navigate a happy and prosperous time in that country's history. Aya won the 2006 Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for First Comic Book and has sold over 200,000 copies in France. Tens of thousands of copies, have been printed worldwide including in the U.S. and Ivory Coast. Her 2013 animated film, Aya of Yop City, was nominated for a Best Animated Film French César Award in 2014. Learn More

Clement Oubrerie

Clément Oubrerie was born in Paris in 1966. He studied graphic arts at the ESAG (Ecole direction artistique et architecture intérieure) before spending two years in the US, where he published his first children's books. He has worked as an illustrator for publishers like Hachette, Mango, Gallimard, Albin Michel and Nathan since the early 1990s. He has also worked as a 3D animator, among others on the Canal+ series Les Moot-Moots, and on his own film Anna Gavalda. Between 2005 and 2010, he worked with his partner, the Ivorian writer Marguerite Abouet on Aya of Yop City, a comical series about everyday life in 1970s Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, published by Gallimard. Aya won the First Book Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, the Children's Africana Book Award and the Glyph Award. It was also nominated for the Quill Award, the YALSA Great Graphic Novels list and the Eisner Award, as well as making best-of lists in The Washington Post, Booklist, Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal. In 2015, French documentary filmmaker Julie Birmant and Oubrerie told the story of Picasso Picasso through the magic of memory and symbolism in the award-winning graphic biography, Pablo. Another collaboration with Julie Birmant, Isadora, about the life of Isadora Duncan, was published in 2019. Learn More