Feature film
The Young Girl
Den Muso
Souleymane Cissé · 1975
Synopsis
A mute girl is raped by a man who has worked for her father. She finds herself pregnant; her family rejects her, and the man refuses to acknowledge the child. The film follows this young woman reduced to silence, whom no one thinks of listening to, alone in the face of rejection by her own people and by the man who abused her.
Context
Shot on 16 mm, after several shorter films, one of them from 1971, the film was banned at once by the authorities, for three years according to the French Centre national du cinéma. Its director, accused of having accepted French funding, spent a few days in prison and was released only after a campaign led by Ousmane Sembène. The Cinémathèque française restored it in 2020 with the author, the Cinémathèque Afrique and the Institut français, with the support of Pathé.
Who it is for
An 88-minute feature film, in subtitled Bambara, centred on a character who does not speak.
Prizes and reception
The first Malian fiction feature film shot in Bambara, and the very first feature film by its director.
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