Country:Senegal

Director:Ousmane Sembene

Summary:

Moolaadé is a rousing Brechtian spectacle that feels like an oral history of a distinctly unpleasant topic: the all-too-common practice of female genital mutilation, still held by many in 39 African countries, under the auspices of Islamic tradition. Set in a colorful Burkina Faso village dotted with immense, man-tall anthills, four small girls resist “purification,” or going under the knife. A powerful woman takes the girls into her home, stringing a rope across her doorway that symbolizes the “moolaadé,” or traditional protection, against the patriarchs. Feeling their power infringed upon, they soon begin to confiscate the women’s radios, and the fight between tradition and modernity comes to a jarring head.