Wrestling Grounds / L’Appel des Arènes

Film

by Cheikh Ndiaye

Details

Senegal / 2005 / 105mins / Drama / Wolof and French

When 17-year-old Nalla joins a champion wrestling team, he learns that wrestling is about more than muscles, money and ladies. Wrestling Grounds twists the familiar images of Africa, cutting from nightclubs to ancestral ceremonies to streets where boomboxes play and athletes in traditional dress and sneakers dance their way to victory.

Trailer

About the Director

Cheikh Ndiaye

Cheikh Amadou Ndiaye is an actor and writer, born in 1962, in Dakar, Senegal. He studied editing and filmmaking at the Free Conservatory of French Cinema (CLCF) in Paris. He produced four documentaries with the company SIRA Badral and two fiction films, one of which is his first feature film The Call of the Arenas, which was selected for the 2006 Berlin Film Festival and won awards at the Amiens International Film Festival. He is known for his acting roles as Ekweme in BiutifulNestor Burma. Learn More