An African tale told by griots.
15-year-old schoolgirl Awa and her brother Adama are twins, which means they share the same angels, angels who do not always have their best interests at heart. Adama dreams of escaping the slums of Dakar on a boat to Europe, while Awa tries to balance school, work in the neighborhood hair salon, and the attentions of men. Veteran Senegalese director Moussa Sène Absa provides a rich blending of Greek tragedy and melodrama with the Senegalese traditions of griots (storyteller/singers) and vibrant West African colour and music to bring alive the dilemmas of African youth, caught between family obligations and the more immediate lures of modernity. In the exciting stylisation of his storytelling lies a distinctive means of showing how African cinema is rising to the challenges of the contemporary moment.
World Cinema Program presented by
