Synopsis

Title : The Cobra and the Crow

Original scénario by Joséphine Bertrand-Tchakoua

We are in 2002. As a result of Antoine's death, one of his colleagues, Thibaut, reporter for an important Parisian press agency, is sent to mission in Africa as his replacement .

 On his arrival, Thibaut is welcomed at the airport by Martin and Paulette, a French couple. Immediately Paulette makes advances to Thibaut who is not refusing. A little while after Paulette is found pregnant.

Some time before the baby's birth, one night as Thibaut drops Paulette at her home, he tells her it would be better that they stop to see each other. Paulette is beside herself but Thibaut stays on his decision. He gives her 50.000 FF to take care of the baby-to-come. Paulette steps out the car and goes home, where a big surprise waits for her !

She discovers her husband making love with another woman. This same evening Paulette quits and goes away in the night without knowing too much where her steps lead her. After a long walking, she feels suddenly pains in the belly and collapses by the roadside.She discovers her husband making love with another woman. This same evening Paulette quits and goes away in the night without knowing too much where her steps lead her. After a long walking, she feels suddenly pains in the belly and collapses by the roadside.

In this same city of Africa lives Mêssaah, a traditional princess. She is a singer. She is the only child of a rich and powerful village chief. On this night, she gives a magnificent spectacle. After the concert, Karim, a trafficker who passes himself off as a manager, proposes a contract for a tour in the United States to Mêssaah. She accepts enthusiastically. Karim makes an appointment with her for the next day to sign the contract.

Just back to her home, Kakou, her cousin, arrives from the village Bakocha, to announce that her father, the village's chief , is about to die and that he wants to see her urgently. Mêssaah tells her chauffeur, Oumarou, to drive her immediately to the village, preferring to lose the wonderful contract which was proposed to her.

 On her way, Mêssaah discovers Paulette, almost inanimate. Mêssaah transports her urgently to the hospital. Kakou is worried by all that waste of time : Mêssaah may arrive too late to see her father still alive. He urges her to leave but Mêssaah, seeing that there is no midwife in the maternity, decides to find one . One of them finally shows up, but her behavior puzzles so much Mêssaah that she decides to attend the delivery, to Kakou's great displeasure.

During the childbirth, Paulette has difficulty in showing because she is too weak to make efforts. Mêssaah implores the help of her ancestors : as by magic, a royal cobra appears outside of the maternity and at the same moment the child is born.

This cobra is the protective totem of Mêssaah's family.

Paulette has given birth to a lovely little boy and dies shortly after. Before dying, she asked Mêssaah to take care of her baby, to give him her last name and call him Louis for his first name. Paulette gave 20.000 FF to the midwife to buy her silence and made her promise to keep he birth secret, what she hurries to accept by pocketing the money. Mêssaah leaves for her village with the newborn child.

On her arrival, while she is welcomed by her old uncle Douki, a strange huge crow, with ears and eyes like human ones, watches them. The eyes of the crow are of a strange metallic blue, which makes its gaze apocalyptic.

Mêssaah goes to her father's bedside. He appoints her as regent-princess of the village, informs her of his last wills, gives her the sacred stone and the command-stick which is an avatar of the cobra appeared during Louis's birth.

The Mêssaah's father dies without having revealed her the name of the man which she should convince to be the village's chief. That would have freed her from the regency and allowed her to resume her singer's career.

After her father 's death she has to face terrible difficulties, especially due to the fact that in the village Bakocha one disapprove a woman being the chief.

Some of the brothers and nephews of the late chief, coveting the throne, think that Mêssaah wants to keep the regency until Louis has grown up to enthrone him as the village's chief. Noubissié, one of the Mêssaah's uncles, visits Mafouta, a man of the darkness, asking him to kill Louis. This man of darkness is none other than the strange metallic blue eyed crow. Ever since this evil being goes wickedly after Louis and Mêssaah.

Thomas, one of her cousin, who also has an eye on the throne, does his best, too, to be harmful to Louis and Mêssaah.

Seven years have passed, Louis has well grown. He is now a young boy full of liveliness. Mêssaah brought him up as the flesh of her flesh, with all her love. He received, as many African children, a double religious education : Christian education and African education, that means God, the ancestors and the nature.

In spite of all these past years, the throne is still coveted as on the first day. Thomas and Noubissié continue their intrigues to be harmful to Louis and Mêssaah and get it. Now they are really convinced that Mêssaah will have Louis enthroned when he will be a little older. Thomas decides then to go to denounce Mêssaah to the French Consulate, accusing her of having kidnapped a white baby.

The fate makes that he comes across Thibaut, who came this day to give photos and a video cassette of a fashion parade with pygmies models to an employee of the Consulate. Thomas tells his story to Thibaut. This one is interested in the affair and wants to do a report on this story of child's kidnapping. He asks Thomas to go with him in his village.

Thibaut and Thomas arrive late in the night at the village Bakocha, under a torrential rain. They enter the chefferie and are arrested by the watchmen who took them for bandits. The following morning they are brought to princess Mêssaah. It is the "coup de foudre" between Thibaut and Mêssaah. Later Thibaut discovers that Louis is his son.

One afternoon, when Louis went with two of his comrades to collect mushrooms in the forest, as all children of their age do, they are followed by the strange corbel. This one attracts the children farther and farther from the village while revealing mushrooms. The children go deeper and deeper into the forest. And arrives what should arrive : they are lost and can't find their way back home.

They walk till the nightfall. That is the time the crow has been waiting to attack them. The children find refuge in a cave. Millions of fireflies come to their help by enlightening the forest with their tiny lights.

But the horrible crow is not far. It rushes at the children. This time they are lost, but, suddenly, the cobra appears.

It is now a mortal combat between the cobra and the crow ...