Recentring marginality: Sili’s abilities in La petite vendeuse de soleil

This article offers a close analysis of the leading role of Sili in La petite vendeuse de soleil (1999), in order to examine the central place of marginality in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s cinema, and its legacy in contemporary Senegalese film productions. The study was inspired by the production in 2022 of a documentary film on Lissa Balera, the Senegalese actress playing the role of Sili, directed by Senegalese filmmaker Georges Diodji and entitled Sili. In the film, Balera revisits her character through a series of narrative techniques: sharing intangible and tangible audio-visual archives, embracing oral stories, photo elicitation and space elicitation. Through a comparative, trans-diegetic and dialogical analysis of both films, I question the ways in which Sili’s representation shifts the attention from disability to abilities. I suggest that despite Sili’s physical impairment, because of poliomyelitis, she is a proactive entrepreneur, whose determination equips her with a set of abilities enhancing her agency in the world. Through Sili, Mambéty’s ability to place marginality at the very centre of the narrative becomes evident, with a legacy that continues today, in films such as La Danse des Béquilles (‘The dance of the crutches’) by Yoro Lidel Niang (2021).