Aïssa at the Tapis Rouge French film festival opening night, Amsterdam - Oct30th 2025
Aïssa Maïga is a French actress, director, writer, producer, and activist of Senegalese and Malian origins. She has collaborated with renowned filmmakers such as Michael Haneke, Abderrahmane Sissako, and Michel Gondry. She participated in the manifesto Noire n’est pas mon metier (“Black is not my job”).
Promis le ciel, by Erige Sehiri
Promis le ciel, selected for Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2025 is certainly a story about powerful women.
Directed by Erige Sehiri, the film “Promis le ciel” (Promised Sky) follows four generations of Ivorian immigrant women in Tunisia as they search for belonging in a world that often makes them feel out of place. The film highlights female resilience, spirituality, and solidarity among migrant women.
Q&A with Aïssa
What follows is a transcript of Victor’s share of the live interview with Aïssa that was conducted on opening night by Pierre-Pascal and Victor of Tapis Rouge.
Victor: […] It is a great pleasure to welcome an actress we admire for her precision, her commitment, and her radiance. Aïssa Maïga, welcome to the Tapis Rouge Festival!
We will be discussing your moving role in Promis le ciel, the new film by Erige Sehiri: a film about faith, dignity, and resistance.
You play Marie, an Ivorian pastor and former journalist living in Tunisia, a woman who fights for the recognition and rights of her fellow sub-Saharan/West Africans in an increasingly stigmatising social context.
1. The character and faith as a driving force
Victor: Your character, Marie, carries a deep faith, but also an immense responsibility: to guide a wounded, sometimes rejected, community. She sometimes has an almost maternal role towards Jolie, Naney, and of course Kenza.
How did you approach this spiritual dimension, both intimate and collective?
Aïssa: I drew inspiration from a real female pastor, just by observing her presence. On set, we were immersed in a real evangelical community, even participating in their actual ceremonies. Marie carries that same strength and determination, especially in the way she protects her community. They meet weekly to pray and share their challenges with one another, believing that through prayer, she can help them overcome those challenges together.
The set of the film was “discreet” but not “unofficial”. The authorities were aware of film set, but evangelical religion is not so authorised in Tunisia. So this community is used to practise faith discreetly.
Despite the religion, and if you’re believer or not, there’s always this dimension of spirituality that sometimes one rejects, sometimes one embraces, but it’s simply part of us.
Victor: One senses in this woman a benevolent authority, a form of feminine leadership. A quiet strength.
What did this role teach you about the place of African women, and particularly women of faith, in our contemporary societies?
How did Erige guide you in portraying this evangelical pastor?
Aïssa: Erige and I wanted to work on a project together for a long time and this felt very natural. I joined the project pretty late in the process, being one of the only professional actress. She’s very used to promote non-professionals in her work.
I really like “Quiet strength” to describe Marie. She is at the service of others to give them faith, she drives them through transcendance, in their difficult life. As Tunisia is most of the times a step within their journey of immigration; with anti-Black racism there and throughout Maghreb, then echoed in Europe. There’s a constant sense of prejudices in the world against “Black bodies”.
Marie has a very uncommon path, a Muslim journalist who became an evangelist pastor. Her fight involves providing spiritual leadership to her community, praying for strength and perseverance, and preaching compassion and forgiveness, while distributing food and supplies to those in need.
The film could almost be a documentary in the way the director is documenting facts, and the reality those people experience.
2. The Status of Women and Migration
Victor: The film paints a poignant portrait of four sub-Saharan women in Tunisia (Marie, Naney, Jolie, and the little Kenza) caught between solidarity, fear, and dignity.
What aspect of reality resonated with you most in this story?
Aïssa: Maybe two aspects.
First, the tragedy behind Kenza’s casting. Originally, Erige casted a little girl for the role of Kenza, that perished with her family on a migrant boat. We were all devastated, but Erige decided to recast Kenza, a way to pay hommage to this little girl and the sad reality of the film, despite the fiction.
Then I was touched by Deborah as a person, she shines throughout the film and has quite a similar personal story as her character, Naney. As we were shooting, at some points, she really had doubts and almost took the decision she would quit the set to get on a boat and try her chance to immigrate. Without knowing, I told her: “Hang on, I feel it, we’re going to Cannes with this film”. And we went! It felt so powerful to be selected in Un Certain Regard. Now she still in Ivory Coast, trying to get a visa.
Deborah, Aïssa, Erige, and Laetitia at Cannes film festival, May 2025
Victor: Watching you in this role, we also think about your own journey as a committed artist, director, and now producer, often a pioneer in a field that remains difficult for women of colour.
Does this quiet strength, embodied by Marie, which sometimes needs to be summoned to be heard in a still unequal environment, resonate with your own personal journey?
Aïssa: I use the quiet strength of Marie as source of inspiration. I come from Mali, Senegal, and French heritage. I’m feeling privileged due to my occupation, my nationality, even though I still experience some kind of racism… Some insistant, contemptuous looks, in my daily life. I’ve been told “You look like a mythological creature” which always feels weird. Anti-Black racism in Maghreb is still very present despite the fact sub-Saharan communities are implemented in Maghreb for a long time.
Victor:
Do you think that Promis le ciel can contribute to this shift in perspective, particularly regarding sub-Saharan migrants in Maghreb?
Aïssa: The film tries to tell the story of actual people behind immigration numbers that we hear in the news. Erige portrays the destiny of three completely different woman that immigrated from very different reasons.
Promis le ciel is a real independent film, Cannes and festivals like Tapis Rouge give us a platform to be able to raise attention to migrant’s conditions in Maghreb and worldwide.
3. A meeting between two female filmmakers
Victor: This film is also a collaboration between strong women: you, Aïssa Maïga, the director, Erige Sehiri, and of course the rest of the cast.
How did this artistic encounter between an Franco-Mali-Senegalese woman and a Tunisian woman come about?
Aïssa: Erige really documented those extraordinary characters, some being very inspired by real women. The immersive setting, and the power of consulting non-professional workers brought reality beyond the fiction of the film, dialing up her documentarian instincts.
I was involved with Erige in some decisions when moving set to interior scenes, due to security.
Victor: We feel a great gentleness in Erige Sehiri’s directing, even in the face of the harshness of the subject matter.
How did this feminine sensitivity influence your acting?
Aïssa: As mentioned earlier, Erige touches on the documentary aspect through the way she portrays this reality. The narration then brings a sense of gentleness, hope, and openness, which is ultimately the essence of the film.
4. In conclusion – A message of hope
Victor: The film’s title, Promis le ciel, evokes both the promise of a better place and faith in the future.
If you had to summarise this film in one sentence, for a young African woman trying to make her way in the world, what would you say?
Aïssa: I’d like to hear it from the audience! (laughs). For me it’s the promise of a different life, whether it comes to fruition or not, echoes the journey of so many migrants. And it echoes Deborah’s story.
Victor: Thank you, Aïssa, for your perspective, your voice, and your courage.
And thanks to Promis le ciel for reminding us that, sometimes, the greatest act of faith is simply to keep fighting, and loving, despite everything.
Pierre-Pascal Bruneau (President of Tapis Rouge film festival), Aïssa Maïga, Victor Tarrius (Director of Tapis Rouge film festival)
Promis le ciel (Promised sky)
Production: (Tunisia-Qatar-France) A Maneki Films, Henia Production, Canal+ production, in association with Mad Solutions, Pathé Touch Afrique, with the participation of TV5 Monde, with the support of Ministère des affaires culturelles de Tunisie, Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), Institut Français, Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image (CNCI), Doha Film Institute, Hubert Bals Fund + Europe programme of International Film Festival Rotterdam, Red Sea Fund, Creative Europe Media, Fonds Image de la Francophonie, Cofinova Developpement 19, Procirep/Angoa et Impact Film. Producers: Didar Domehri, Erige Sehiri.
Crew: Director: Erige Sehiri. Screenplay: Erige Sehiri, Anna Ciennik, Malika Cécile Louati. Camera: Frida Marzouk. Editor: Nadia Ben Rachid. Music: Valentin Hadjadj.
With: Aïssa Maïga, Laetitia Ky, Debora Lobe Naney, Mohamed Grayaâ, Foued Zaazaa, Estelle Kenza Dogbo, Touré Blamassi. (Arabic, French dialogue)
A word about the festival
Tapis Rouge celebrates French cinema with an original and varied program: dramas, comedies, art-house films, and more. The festival reflects contemporary French and Francophone cinema. For this seventh edition, the films are divided into four categories: Cinéma d’Aujourd’hui - Contemporary Cinema, Cinéma de la Francophonie - Francophone Cinema, Comedy & Entertainment, and the Tapis Rouge Prize Selection. Our films are always current releases, not yet distributed in the Netherlands, and many of which we have premiered in Amsterdam.