Seydina Baldé Talks Mission To Create African Action Hero With ‘Lex Africana’: “He’s Part African Zorro, Part Jason Bourne”

French-Senegalese actor and producer Seydina Baldé has worn many hats across his career including World Karate Champion and stuntman on films such as Brian de Palma’s Femme Fatale and Bond movie Casino Royale, but his dream since childhood has been to be an actor.

After a dozen small parts, Baldé engineered his first starring role with the self-produced, English-language action thriller Covert Operation (aka The Borderland). The North Korean-set movie, about a bounty hunter on a mission to break prisoners out of high-security military compound, sold to Lionsgate for the U.S. and won praise from action movie fans. 

A decade later, Baldé is appearing in the most ambitious production of his career, six-part show Lex Africana, which is being billed as the first martial arts-based action thriller to come out of West Africa. 

Baldé plays brilliant architect and martial arts expert Gabriel Aliou Thiam who returns after a spell in Asia to his native Senegal and home city of Dakar, following the death of his politician father in a car crash.

He comes to suspect that the death was not accidental. When local police dismiss his concerns, he mounts his own investigation in a move that will bring him up against Dakar’s criminal underworld, as well as forces outside the country. At the same time, Thiam takes a job with a local NGO which exposes him to a brighter vision for Senegal.

The cast also features Maud Baecker (Tomorrow is Ours), Richard Sammel (The French Village), Aicha Ba (Manjak), Matar Diouf (Wara, Atlantics), Amélie Mbaye (Emprise), Moussa Sow (Banel & Adama) and Eriq Ebouaney (Here and There) as well as stuntman and long-time Baldé collaborator Serge Crozon-Cazin.

The title Lex Africana takes its cue from Pax Romana, the name given to the 200 years of peace and prosperity within the Roman empire from 27 BC to 180 AD. Lex Africana hero Gabriel is on a mission to achieve the same stability in Africa.

_{Seydina Baldé, Alexandre Rideau (c) Franck Castel MPP}

Baldé created and co-wrote the series with Manuel di Zio. The series is produced by Keewu Productions, the Dakar-based company and Mediawan Africa subsidiary led by Alexandre Rideau, in co-production with Baldé’s Shimazu Productions.

“I thought it was time for an African hero in the vein of Jason Bourne, or Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible,” says Baldé. “He is part an African Zorro, for the way he works in the shadows, part Jason Bourne.”  

He was also keen to challenge outside perceptions of Africa as well as show its contrasting realities, through the character of Thiam, who represents a growing Senegalese, upwardly mobile middle class, while his investigation brings him into contact with darker side of his country.

Baldé, who was born and raised in France and also lived in Canada for a time, woke up to the potential of shooting in Senegal when he was cast in Stefano Sollima’s 2020 Sky Atlantic, Canal+ and Amazon Prime Video Italian crime drama ZeroZeroZero, for two episodes which shot in the country. 

“I could see the country was ready to welcome quality productions, when it came to its technicians,” he said. 

He sought out Rideau as a partner after being impressed by Keewu’s 2019 Dakar-set cop series Sakho & Mangane, created by Jean Luc Herbulot (Saloum), and starring Issaka Sawadogo and Yann Gael. 

“For me, that was the first ever premium production to come out of French-speaking Africa. I wanted a solid partner who was open to the action genre, which isn’t easy to pull off and has its own special language,” he explains. 

Rideau, who has been based in Africa for more than two decades, created Keewu Production in 2012. 

The Dakar-based company became part of Lagardère Studios in 2015, which in turn was acquired by pan-European film and TV content group Mediawan in 2020. The company is now a cornerstone of regional pole Mediawan Africa, with Rideau also taking on the role of Head of Production within that group.

Keewu has led the way in West Africa in terms of developing local drama series with other credits including C’est La Vie and Black Santiago Club.

Rideau says identifying above and below the line talents, and then training and accompanying them in the early stages of their careers, is at the heart of Keewu’s operations with the aim of supporting and growing the audiovisual ecosystem in Senegal and wider West Africa.

“We’ve had productions in recent years, where 20% of the production costs are linked to training. If more and more series are being shot in Dakar today, it’s because we’ve helped build three, four crews through this work,” he explains. 

“With every production we try to push the quality up a little bit more and also move into new genres. One of the reasons we were happy with Sakho & Mangane is that we managed to make an American-style police series out of Africa. What we liked about Seydina’s project was the fact it took the codes of action cinema and transferred them to Africa and Dakar, in a very authentic way.”

Lex Africana launched April 22 on Canal+ Original and Canal+ Afrique and will be made available in six months time on Chaine Action, the French network run by Mediawan Thematics which is part of the Canal+ bouquet.

Mediawan’s international sales arm, which put down a MG, is now working on securing distribution outside the French-speaking world, with rights available for the U.S., Canada, Australia and UK. 

Both Baldé and Rideau say the scale of Lex Africana has laid the ground for equally ambitious series set in other parts of the African continent.

Baldé reveals they are in the late stages of development on a new English-language show set and shot across South Africa, where he notes the cinema industry already has a track-record in the action genre. 

“We’ll be shooting in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. It will be a sort of treasure hunt across South Africa with a story at its heart that has global resonance and a mixed local and international cast,” he says. 

The pair also have plans for future seasons of Lex Africana.

“The first season is the birth of a hero,” says Baldé. “The first episodes take their time to establish Gabriel’s character, the world he inhabits and the other characters, but by the end of the six episodes, he very much exists and we’d like him to continue his mission, not just in Senegal but in other parts of Africa.”