South Sudanese documentary filmmaker, Akuol de Mabior, is set to make her narrative feature film debut with an adaptation of Ghost Season.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
South Sudanese documentary filmmaker, Akuol de Mabior, is set to make her narrative feature film debut with an adaptation of Ghost Season, the 2023 novel by Sudanese-American writer, Fatin Abbas.
Set in a fictional, oil-rich town at the border of Sudan and South Sudan, Ghost Season follows five characters: a South Sudanese translator, a Northern Sudanese nomad and cook, a Sudanese American documentary filmmaker, a white American geographer, and a local boy who works as a housekeeper, who are caught in the conflict on the border at the brink of the impending civil war.
Abbas’ debut novel, Ghost Season has been praised for its evocativeness, complexity, and humanity, with the New York Times describing it as a “haunting account and a daring debut”.
Known for her 2022 documentary feature debut, No Simple Way Home, which was nominated for the Panorama Audience Award at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival where it made history as the first South Sudanese film to be screened at the Berlinale, de Maboir is billed to serve as both writer and director of the film adaptation of Ghost Season.
The film is being produced by former journalist, Michael Bronner (The Mauritanian (2021)) and writer and academic, Bhakti Shringarpure, under the banner of Smashing Dandelions, a new Paris-based film and TV production company which Bronner and Shringarpure founded to produce “bold, globally resonant stories that emerge from historical events, drawing upon in-depth journalistic research and reporting, as well as adaptations from literature”.
With Ghost Season, Akuol de Mabior taps into the evolving relationship between African cinema and the diasporic voice, as well as the growing call for filmmakers to explore literature in telling layered and authentic African stories.
Cast and production details are unavailable at this time.