Zalika Souley is in her fifties. She lives with four children in a two-bedroom apartment with neither electricity nor water in Niamey, the capital of Niger. But thirty years ago, she was a movie star and Africa’s first professional female actress, working with such celebrated directors as Niger’s Oumarou Ganda and Moustapha Alassane. Souley was once the legendary bad girl of African cinema defying directors with her compelling improvisations. Yet, despite her fame, her life was beset by difficulty. In moving and often heart-breaking interviews, Souley speaks wistfully about how audiences confused her with the women she portrayed – vamps, adulteresses, prostitutes - and how, as her stardom rose abroad, she became a pariah in her own country.

More than a simple chronicle of Souley’s extraordinary career, the film is a moving homage to the heyday of Nigerien cinema in the 1960s when a cottage industry of Westerns, detective films and thrillers delighted audiences. African actors donned cowboy hats and channeled their heroes - Steve McQueen, Jimmy Stewart and Ronald Reagan. AL’LEESSI (meaning "a destiny" in Songhoy) encapsulates the condition of women in modern African society and the history of cinema in Niger which has all but dissolved in recent years. Equally essential for women’s studies, cinema studies, African and post-colonial studies, AL'LEESSI is a love letter to this pioneer of Nigerien cinema and a poignant meditation on the current state of the African film industry.