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During the Cannes Film Festival, our media team had the honor of meeting Sully Quay, a Franco-Togolese and Beninese writer, at the Pavillon Afriques—a space dedicated to showcasing film talents and content from Africa and its diaspora.
The Essential Role of Pavillon Afriques
Since its inception, the Pavillon Afriques has become a vital strategic platform for promoting African and Afro-descendant cinema at Cannes. It serves as a dynamic hub for cultural, economic, and creative exchange, providing industry professionals from the continent and the diaspora access to global networks of production, distribution, and financing. The Pavilion acts as both a catalyst and connector, affirming Africa’s central place in the global cinematic narrative. It also offers a crucial platform for spotlighting stories that are still underrepresented on screen—such as the powerful narrative brought forward by Sully Quay.
A Literary Voice Committed to Memory
Sully Quay took part in the “From Book to Screen” session, an event organized by Pavillon Afriques where authors and publishers pitched their works to producers. The session began with a key legal presentation titled “Protecting Your Work: Legal Keys Before Signing with a Producer”, led by Casey Joly, a lawyer specialized in intellectual property. It provided invaluable guidance for writers aiming to adapt their work for the screen while safeguarding their rights.
This was followed by a series of literary pitch presentations, where Sully Quay introduced her novel “A Starless Prisoner”, published by Ramsay Éditions. This gripping and richly layered story explores a rarely addressed historical subject: a Black man imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.
A Fiction Rooted in History
The novel, inspired by Sully Quay’s grandfather, begins in 1932. It follows Sylvestre Kpoto, a brilliant young man from a wealthy Togolese family, who moves to Chicago to study medicine. Faced with racial segregation in the U.S., he leaves for Paris, inspired by the legacy of Josephine Baker. Though he becomes a successful surgeon, he must constantly battle racism. His life takes a dramatic turn when he falls deeply in love with Anna, a German interpreter.
But in early 1944, Sylvestre is arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. He endures the horrors of the camp through solidarity with fellow prisoners and the letters he writes to Anna. Back in Paris, Anna does everything she can to find and rescue him—but nothing is guaranteed. Will she succeed in saving Sylvestre from the certain death of the camps? Their story becomes a cinematic tribute to memory, examining the Black man’s place in history through the lenses of slavery, segregation, and Nazism.
A Voice Shaped by Exile
Sully Quay, also a comedian, is no newcomer to writing. Her first novel, I’m an Expat and So What?!, written in English, explores the experiences of expatriate women. She has lived abroad for several years—in South Korea, Poland, and Hungary—experiences that deeply inform her writing. Her visits to historical sites in Ouidah (Benin), Anécho (Togo), and Auschwitz (Poland) have profoundly shaped her perspective on trauma and memory.
With “A Starless Prisoner”, Sully Quay delivers a highly documented yet fictional narrative, at the crossroads of literature, history, and cinema. It is a bold, untold story—one that deserves a place on the big screen and in today’s cultural conversation.
