Son du serpent (2015)

Short film has always been a proving ground for distinctive voices, and Son du Serpent (2015) is very much a product of that tradition. Running to just eleven minutes, the film comes from director Tami Ravid, a co-production between Family Affair Films and the Beninese company Le Grand Cru, which makes it a relatively rare example of a formal creative partnership between a West African country and a European producer. Benin's film industry operates on a modest scale compared to the larger hubs of African cinema, which gives a release like this a certain significance: it represents one of the few Beninese films to achieve any kind of international circulation. The premise is rooted in ideas of loss and the supernatural, following a man's increasingly disoriented search for his missing wife through a landscape that sits somewhere between the physical and the spiritual. It is the kind of story that tends to resist clean, literal explanation, which is either a virtue or a frustration depending on what you want from eleven minutes of cinema.

The film stars Rachelle Agbossou and Guillaume Niedjo, and the production leans heavily on physical performance and visual atmosphere rather than conventional dialogue-driven storytelling. That approach puts it in similar company to other drama shorts that prioritise feeling and movement over plot mechanics, a tendency you can trace across different corners of world cinema, from smaller African productions like Sugar Cane Alley to contemporary festival fare such as Tiger Stripes. Ravid's background as a director sits across borders, which may explain why the film carries a slightly hybrid quality: the road movie structure feels internationally legible, while the visual language draws on local ritual and symbolic tradition. Whether that combination holds together over eleven minutes is the kind of question the film poses to its audience fairly directly.

Visually, one of the most discussed elements of the film is its use of white face paint, a choice that carries specific cultural weight within Beninese and broader West African spiritual traditions. For viewers unfamiliar with Vodun and related practices, it can read as simply aesthetic, polished but unremarkable imagery. For those with some knowledge of the context, or those willing to do a bit of reading afterwards (always a reasonable thing to ask), it opens up a more considered conversation about what the film is actually doing with its supernatural premise. It is the sort of detail that separates a film made with genuine cultural grounding from one that simply reaches for an exotic visual shorthand. You can find Son du Serpent on Vimeo, which is worth knowing given that it has not had any wide commercial release.

A-Z World Challenge Benin Firstly... find it here - https://vimeo.com/295750954 So... It's a short dance film. I can't say that's particularly good for my taste but I was able to enjoy what I saw. There was glimpses of Benin and there was clearly some really great choreography and dancing. The white facepaint (chalk possibly) was quite interesting and I've since done some research and concluded that it's often associated with ritual purity, spiritual renewal and the spirit world. Symbolizing the connection between the spirit world and purification. So... I'm happy that this film helped me learn something about the rich culture of Benin.

I found myself in much the same position: the dance-led approach is not necessarily where my instincts take me, but there is something genuinely rewarding about sitting with a film that sends you off to look something up. That white face paint detail stuck with me too, and the more you read about its connections to spiritual renewal and ritual in that part of the world, the more the film's stranger moments start to cohere. Short films that leave you with a question worth pursuing are doing something worthwhile, even when they do not quite land on all their own terms. It is a slim eleven minutes, but it carries a bit more weight than its running time might suggest. Sometimes that is enough.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2015  | Watched: 2025-05-21

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