Personal relations, joys and disappointments of a dancer highlight intersections of transnational life.
Silent Legacy (2025). Directors: Jenni Kivistö and Jussi Rastas, Finland
The movie Silent Legacy is a personal and intimate documentary about the life of dancer and choreographer Sibiry Konaté, based in Finland. Focusing on everyday life of Sibiry, the movie simultaneously presents intersections of identity, migration, dancing professionality, parenting, loneliness and friendship.
Most importantly, it invites us into the transnational life of Sibiry and unfolds tensions related to remittances – transfer of money or goods – back to Burkina Faso. Hence, the movie navigates on personal but also societal levels, revealing the silent legacy of monetary burdens connecting African diaspora members in Europe.
In the words of Sibiry: “It is a shadow of colonialism”. When you migrate to Europe, your position changes and what people see in you is money. This entails that you are expected to bring back money when you go to Western countries. As Sibiry notes: “Everybody relies on you so it’s a heavy burden”.
Behind the underlying burden of coloniality, the movie is visually beautiful, incorporating scenes from Tiene, Sibiry’s village in Burkina Faso. We see children dancing and playing, we hear the sounds of animals and can sense the dust in the sand.
These scenes are interwoven with Sibiry dancing in various contexts—against the white snow representing Finland, in an elevator, and in a white suit while spreading money—insightfully and sensitively illustrating how he navigates different spaces and positions in his transnational life.
Lost between two continents?
There is, from my white, Finnish, perspective a sadness in a legacy you cannot leave behind, a legacy that follows you around in your everyday life. This phenomenon is well pictured in the movie through voice messages from friends and family hoping for money.
Having lived in Finland for a long time, the sense of belonging to his village in Burkina Faso has changed. It becomes clear that the Sibiry who left Tiene is no longer welcome as the boy he once was, and that he is not able to go back living in Tiene as the Sibiry he was before moving to the West. Now, he is what he himself refers to as “a god from the land of white people”, everybody wants something from him.
There is, from my white, Finnish, perspective a sadness in a legacy you cannot leave behind, a legacy that follows you around in your everyday life. This phenomenon is well pictured in the movie through voice messages from friends and family hoping for money.
This movie contributes to unfolding various complexities in life, as Sibiry is partly an African decent migrant in Finland, struggling in a system with structural racism and partly a privileged European in the eyes of the Tienes relatives and friends. As he states:
“You’re lost between two countries, two continents”
In order to somewhat fulfill the request from friends and family, and perhaps also still the flow of requests of money, Sibiry plans to ship a van from Finland to Burkina Faso. In the burden of doing correctly, he ponders if sending a van can be perceived as showing off – or if the villagers will think the van is not good enough. We see how he negotiates on renovations of the van in Finland, packs the van full with necessities and then ships it to the African continent.
“This bus could bring big changes to Tiene”
Eventually the van does not make it to Sibirys’s village as due to various struggles and setbacks. In the movie, these moments and struggles are brilliantly filmed through the scene of the van, in a dark background, without its engine. Symbolically, the black hole where the engine once sat resonates with the feeling Sibiry might have; this is the thank you get for saving money to buy a van and shipping it to Burkina Faso – getting betrayed.
African remittance legacy
Situating the movie and Sibiry’s experiences in a larger perspective, Sibiry is part of the African diaspora in the Nordic countries. As noted by the United Nations, the amount of remittances to African countries has grown during the past years, due to a larger African diaspora but also due to mobile options for sending remittances.
Remittances from African diaspora members have a great impact on African economy, from macro structures such as larger companies to microstructures of households and neighborhoods. However, it appears that the report does not address the negative sides of remittances, the dark sides of monetary bounds that are well documented in the movie.
According to recent research, remittances also appear to increase conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa. Looking at individual experiences of remittance senders, research highlights socio-cultural norms, such as ubuntu, creating tensions and pressure among migrants to send money “back home”, while simultaneously settling in the host country.
The amount of remittances to African countries has grown during the past years, due to a larger African diaspora but also due to mobile options for sending remittances.
In the movie, we see Sibiry working at Posti and as a cleaner, picturing the precarious situation when it comes to employment for migrants of African descent in Finland. Due to structural challenges in the Finnish job market, such as employment and recruitment discrimination or unnecessary high language requirements, working in precarious positions at low paid jobs is something many migrants end up doing.
Personally, I feel this is such a waste of Sibiry’s dancing talent and feel sad for living in a society not appreciating the dancing expertise Sibiry brings to Finland. Ten years ago, I took part in Sibiry’s afro dance classes and recalled thinking that he should be teaching experts. And so he has been, but still, I cannot but feel frustration against attitudes in the job market in Finland.
“I came here to dance”
“For me dancing is freedom”
From my perspective, it feels unreasonable and unequal that in addition to striving to get along economically and settle in a new host country, one would need to send remittances “back home”. These are exactly the global inequalities Jenni Kivistö and Jussi Rastas with their documentary movies want to illustrate.
The white gaze
This is not the first documentary movie made by Jenni Kivistö and Jussi Rastas. Previously, the couple has been internationally recognized and awarded for their documentary movie Colombia in My Arms. In a documentary series about creative couples at the streaming site Yle Areena, we can follow their journey highlighting global inequalities and unfolding colonial legacies.
In recent years, the lens has also turned towards themselves, raising a discussion about representation and them as white from the Global North making movies about the Global South. We hear them pondering about whether it actually matters if they are white, making a movie in Africa or if it is more important to highlight inequalities than to critically scrutinize them being Europeans and racially white.
I would suggest that both matters, and that it definitively matters if you are racially white when making movies about colonial legacies. It matters what information, what spaces, what standpoints and what resources you might access. Likewise, it matters that I have a white gaze when writing this review, it positions me differently than if it had been written by an African decent researcher. Scrutinizing the structurally powerful position one has supports self-reflection related to individual encounters, but also power encounters between the Global South and North societies.
Scrutinizing the structurally powerful position one has supports self-reflection related to individual encounters, but also power encounters between the Global South and North societies.
The film demonstrates considerable sensitivity, and Kivistö and Rastas’ personal experiences of living and spending significant time in the Global South inform their understanding of global inequalities. However, recognizing how being white matters would allow the viewers to feel – for coming movies- that this is an ethically sound movie, where white privileges are made conscious – and perhaps contested.
Towards the end, I want to thank both Sibiry and the documentary makers for this important movie, highlighting intersections of transnational life. Openly sharing personal relations, joys and disappointments for a large public requires strength and courage, thank you for this Sibiry. I really wish this documentary movie would be viewed by politicians, researchers and students and I wish Sibiry, that you will be able to dance, freely.
Liselott Sundbäck is a postdoctoral researcher in social policy at Åbo Akademi University.
Silent Legacy (Directors: Jenni Kivistö and Jussi Rastas, 2025) is screened at DocPoint-festival 3.–8.2.2026.
Check the screening programme for showtimes.
Read all Politiikasta DocPoint 2026 reviews in english here.
All Politiikasta DocPoint 2026 reviews in Finnish here.
Article image: Silent Legacy (2025) / DocPoint
