A couple of films from Africa.

I Am All Girls (2021), directed by Donovan Marsh. I wanted to like this film. Its story about abducted girls in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa is important. Human trafficking is a huge problem and worthy of scrutiny. Race relations are a huge problem and worthy of examination. Corruption in high places is a huge problem and worthy of uncovering. In other words, this film has much going for it. However, the narrative is presented to us in a confusing (to me anyway) manner that gives us several timelines, the characters are sketched in a rudimentary manner, the social conditions are glossed over, and I cannot help but think we have another white person coming to the rescue. My apologies for all the passives in the previous sentence, but the film is a passive affair. It lacks grit. It lacks a firm grip on the narrative. It lacks characters we engage with in any important way. The cinematography delivers that murky dark look familiar to us from so many films of the thriller/revenge story kind. What we have is a sketch for a better film.

 

Mandabi (1968), directed by Ousmane Sembene. This is the first film ever made in an African language, Wolof. The title translates as “the Money Order.” The plot is straight forward: an unemployed Muslim man in Senegal receives a money order from a nephew who is working in France, and what follows involves neighbours looking for a handout and a bureaucracy nearly impossible to navigate. The system is corrupt, people are selfish and greedy. The man’s two wives are long-suffering. The sun is hot. The ground is dry. One moment in the film strikes me as crucial. As the man sits in the car of his relative who wears a suit and knows how the system works and participates in the corruption, he sees a white family emerge from the town hall with their papers and with their ease. We know that the troubles this man encounters, his name is Ibrahim Dieng (Makhouredia Gueye), stem from his not knowing how to cope with post-colonial life. He cannot read and he cannot understand how to deal with bureaucracy, a bureaucracy formed under colonial rule. The film has funny moments, but it is hardly a comedy. The final scene with the postman offers just a glimmer of hope, just a glimmer. This is an amazing film, an exercise in neo-realism and an indictment of the colonial past and what it leaves behind.