DIRECTOR: rama thiaw
90 minutes | SENEGAL, France

One evening in August 2012, my mother vanished. We have been searching for her ever since, but in all these years, we haven’t found a single sign that she is still alive.

What remains of Mariama? What imprint did she make, what legacy did she leave us?

This film retraces the dazzle and distress of an African woman who navigated the half century from 1960 to 2012 with brilliance, in a life ablaze with the choice of liberty over submission.

Making The Vanishing is a way of bringing the invisible to light and, by the same stroke, tracing the course of my own desire for cinema.