Lees Waxul (Yoro Mbaye) Senegal, France, Belgium |

Lees Waxul
Yoro Mbaye
Senegal, France, Belgium. 2024. 21 min

In his village where bread is scarce, Ousseynou, a former fisherman and cornerstone of his family, finds modest economic stability by selling stale bread.
However, the opening of his sister-in-law’s traditional bakery constitutes an affront to him, leaving a palpable unspoken tension between them (Lees Waxul), and gradually jeopardizing both his business and his role
as a family father.

YORO MBAYE

Yoro MBAYE is a Senegalese filmmaker who explores contemporary society in his country through fiction short films and documentaries. His works, such as Journée Noire on police violence, and Famara addressing the situation of undocumented delivery workers in Paris, have been selected at several international festivals, including Clermont-Ferrand.
In October 2021, Yoro participated in the Ouaga Film Lab with Fagadaga, his first feature film project, winning four awards: Sud Écriture, Groupe Ouest, Ateliers de l’Atlas, and the ALCA Nouvelle-Aquitaine prize. He also received writing assistance from the CNC and a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in 2022. He presented the same project at the Fabrique des Cinémas du Monde during the Cannes Film Festival in 2023.
In 2024, he completed his latest short film, titled LEES WAXUL, as a director, a co-production between Senegal, France, Belgium, and the Central African Republic.

Yoro MBAYE is also a producer. In 2020, as a producer at the Yennenga center, he co-produced, alongside France, Canada, and Ivory Coast, La Nuit des Rois, a feature film directed by Philippe LACÔTE nominated for the 2021 Oscars.
He later joined the Ludwigsburg-Paris Workshop, a professional training program for young producers and distributors, co-organized by Fémis (Paris) and Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Germany).
In 2022, Yoro MBAYE created the production company, Nafi Films with which he co-produced Alain Gomis’ latest feature film, Dao, currently in post-production, his short film Lees Waxul and his feature film in development Fagadaga.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

I am from Thiallé, a small, remote village in the Fatick region, one of the poorest areas in central Senegal. A village with fewer than 150 inhabitants, practically non-existent due to the lack of modern infrastructure.
Deeply affected by the injustices I’ve witnessed throughout my life, I’ve felt a strong sense of activism ever since my anger matured into a desire to express itself. This is what initially led me to pursue legal studies, before discovering that cinema offered me more effective tools to fight my battles. I then fully dedicated myself to filmmaking.

With Lees Waxul, I wish to depict situations, places, and events that are close to my heart: the relationships between city dwellers and villagers, the rich and the poor, men and women, as well as the fragility of family ties when tested by law and morality. I intend to observe Senegalese society through the lens of Fagadaga1 (second-hand bread) that has several lives before reaching the tables of the most impoverished.

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