“I find myself looking in the mirror and forgetting the scar”

Walk the streets of Paris, fear in your stomach. Fear of being brutalized, even 4,000 kilometers from home, by those who do not forgive her “to have spoken”. Fear even your own shadow the days when anguish prevails. Azata Soro fought this state of hypervigilance for five years. And defeated him just six months ago. “I finally feel safe”confides, almost astonished, the Burkinabe actress and director, met in an associative premises of the XIX^e district of Paris where she leads film workshops with teenage girls.

At 1.56m tall, Azata Soro moves with a confident step, perched on high-heeled boots and dressed in a dapper green suit. On this gloomy afternoon, she shines. The scar which split his cheek on five centimeters is hardly guessed. After a dozen operations at the Tenon hospital in Paris, the thirties found her chubby face adorned with a nose piercing and framed by long honey-colored braids. “I find myself looking in the mirror and forgetting about the scar,” she specifies.

Nevertheless, even repaired, his body keeps in memory this disastrous September 30, 2017. That day, a villa nestled in the heart of an upscale district of Ouagadougou serves as a setting for the series The throne directed by Tahirou Tasséré Ouédraogo. Suddenly, an argument breaks out between the filmmaker and Azata Soro, his costume designer. A story of false connections and theft of reams of papers. The tone rises under the dumbfounded gaze of some thirty technicians and actors. Azata Soro accuses. “I told everything he had done to me for six years. Touching, sexual assault, harassment. I could not any moreshe breathes. He shouted at me: “Shut up or I’ll kill you!”. I continued. »

A gaping tear in the left cheek

A fight ensues. The filmmaker grabs a bottle of beer, smashes it and lacerates several centimeters of his left cheek using a shard of glass. “I saw my blood squirt without understanding where it came from. I didn’t feel any pain.”, she relates, placidly. On set, the audience shudders. “Technicians got up to rescue Azata, but the director told them: ‘Nobody move!’ They sat downreports still flabbergasted one of the main actresses of the film, Sita Traoré, present that day. I pressed a tank top against her cheek. Then we drove to the hospital. » On the spot, the gaping tear made the nurses scream, but Azata Soro grew impatient: he had to file a complaint before his attacker “don’t use his connections to bury the affair”she explains.

Meanwhile in the villa, the blood is cleaned up on the director’s orders, according to witnesses. Then the shooting resumes. Azata Soro manages to denounce her attacker. A trial opens in November 2017 in a climate of tension. The actress and two of her witnesses claim to have been pressured by the filmmaker’s entourage. ” I was offered money, I refused “Says Sita Traoré, dismissed after the attack. ” In court, it was very violent. A group of women came every day to support Tahirou. They insulted us, like we were witches “, she adds. This famous Ivorian-Burkinabe actress and producer, who says to herself ” traumatized by the case, ended up leaving the country.

As for Tahirou Tasséré Ouédraogo, after being placed under a warrant of committal for six weeks, he was sentenced to an eighteen-month suspended prison sentence for “intentional assault and battery” and the payment of health costs of 3,960,000 CFA francs (some 6,000 euros). “He still hasn’t settled my reconstruction”, protests Azata Soro. Reached by telephone, Tahirou Tasséré Ouédraogo claims not to have been informed of the court decision.

The actress, she pays the price of her speech. In a country where the 7^e art enjoys major prestige and influence – for half a century, every two years, it has hosted one of the largest African film festivals, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival (Fespaco) – , the ” environment “ stood away from the assaulted actress while relaying the director’s version. “People said they were in a relationship, that you shouldn’t get involved in a private matter. They learned that it was a woman who was dating a director and not a man who assaulted a woman,” indignant actress Kady Traoré, friend of Azata Soro.

Fear of reprisals

Unequal treatment reinforced by the status of the director, younger brother of Idrissa Ouédraogo, a legend of cinema in Africa. In addition, the proximity of Tahirou Tasséré Ouédraogo with political circles has completed the ostracization of the actress. The affair is rumored two years later at the Fespaco. Informed of the selection of the Throne in official competition, foreign actresses including Aïssa Maïga denounce this choice, scandalous for them, at the time of #metoo. The non-aligned filmmakers and Noire n’est pas mon profession collectives demand via a petition the withdrawal of the series. In vain.

But the event offers an unexpected platform for Azata Soro. During a round table, several actresses, including Nadège Beausson Diagne (Welcome to Ch‘you, More beautiful life), reveal having been assaulted or harassed by African filmmakers. The Burkinabe actress in turn takes the floor in front of a stirred room. Cheerfulness – “It was the first time that I was heard”, she said –, Azata Soro asserts that she “no longer afraid” to speak. A journalist suggests the launch of the hashtag #MêmePasPeur to unite the voices of victims of male violence in French-speaking African cinema.

The mobilization led to the termination of the partnership between the TV5 channel, pre-purchaser of the Throne, and Tahirou Tasséré Ouédraogo. A relative victory. The series was subsequently broadcast on the Burkinabe, Ivorian and Gabonese national channels. As for the expected surge, it did not take place. The victims spoke privately but away from the courts. “It didn’t take because no one wants to listen to African women. Neither cultural institutions, nor justice, nor the police”regrets Azata Soro.

Following this second speech, the daily life of the actress becomes tense again. For fear of reprisals, she deserts her home and finds refuge with her relatives. Exhausted, Azata Soro ends up leaving Burkina Faso for France, thanks to friends, including Aïssa Maïga, Audrey Pulvar and Nadège Beausson Diagne. “I never dreamed of leaving my country. But I was forced to, she sighs.

Harassed

A departure experienced as a failure after years of working to establish himself as a filmmaker. Because Azata Soro, a graduate in sociology, enters through the back door into the teeming environment of 7^e Burkinabe art. On the sets, he is entrusted with the management of costumes, planning or assistance to the director. The young woman continues filming, swaps heels and miniskirts for sneakers and a scruffy look. In 2011, a novice in the profession, she met Tahirou Tasséré Ouédraogo. The filmmaker offers him a role for Lost Cause Lawyers, a series broadcast on TV5. ” He complimented me, offered to re-read his screenplays. I was flattered “, she recalls.

But very quickly, the director would have been insistent. ” He offered me the same year a role in a big upcoming production. I was thrilled. Then he gave me an appointment at his place to have me read the script. He was alone and asked me to massage him. A balm was on the table. I refused and left “says the young woman, adding that other technicians and actresses on the set revealed to her that they had experienced similar scenes.

Azata Soro claims to have “distancing himself”. Three years later, in 2014, Tahirou Tasséré Ouédraogo again offered him a role. ” I had in mind my desire to succeed. He called me for a work meeting at his house at the end of the day. After a while, he said to me, “If you don’t sleep here, you’re fired.” I came out in tears and called the other lead comedian. He defended me the next day on the set and I was able to continue working. » The actress later reveals that she was harassed by unwanted phone calls at night, to the point that she was forced to block her number.

Azata Soro pauses in her story, before erasing from her memory another sexual assault, experienced in 2016 during the filming of Thomasa feature film directed by the same filmmaker, in which she plays a luxury prostitute. ” In one scene, I was lying on the bed, in a nightie and on my stomach. He pounced on me when it wasn’t written in the script. I was shocked, she says. One of the actors present, furious, grabbed him by the collar. Tahirou replied that it was for fun. » A grueling shoot during which the actress reported ” touching and, again, repeated nocturnal phone calls.

” Not to be seen as diminished or crazy”

Tahirou Tasseré Ouédraogo, for his part, denies any harassment. ” I did not understand these accusations because we were a couple. It was I who introduced her to the world of cinema so that she wouldn’t stay at home. She wanted revenge because she didn’t get the role in the series The throne », fumes the filmmaker.

Far from his family, Azata Soro is rebuilding. It took him several years to push the door of a therapist. ” I’m still ashamed to say it because, at home, it’s a Western thing. I don’t want to be seen as diminished or crazy “, she confides. The Burkinabee is also pursuing her writing projects. With the support of the Atelier des artistes en exile, she won two screenplay prizes and is working on a documentary on domestic violence.

No question of returning to Burkina Faso, where Tahirou Tasséré Ouédraogo continues his career – he made a new film in 2021. From Bobigny, Azata Soro anxiously watches for news of the country shattered by terrorist violence. The director prefers to inflict a life in exile on herself than to suffer ostracism in the medium of Burkinabe cinema. ” On the night of the verdict, Tahirou organized a gigantic party to celebrate his victory. All the elite of cinema went there. It broke meshe points out.. My life has no value for them. I remain an outcast. »