Feature film
Letter from My Village
Kaddu Beykat
Safi Faye · 1975
Synopsis
In a village in Senegal, drought has ruined the millet and groundnut farmers, groundnuts being the export crop imposed on them. Ngor, a young farm labourer, wants to marry Coumba and cannot pay the dowry. He leaves for Dakar to look for odd jobs, and the city exploits him as the land had done. The director frames this story with her own voice: the film presents itself as a villager's letter to a friend, a letter filmed in the very village where she has her roots.
Context
The film mixes village chronicle and narrative: for some scenes, the director gathered the villagers around a subject and filmed their conversation. It was shot in three weeks, in black and white, at Fad'jal, her family's village, with a crew of three and the help of the French Ministry of Cooperation, and her grandfather, who appears in it, died shortly afterwards. Banned at first in Senegal for its criticism of monoculture, it was released in France on 20 October 1976. It is the first feature film by an African woman to be distributed in cinemas.
Who it is for
An hour and a half, in Serer and French, between documentary and fiction. The film combines observation of village life and narrative, with no added explanatory commentary.
Prizes and reception
Georges Sadoul Prize; International Critics' Prize and Catholic Office Prize in Berlin in 1976; distinguished at Ouagadougou.