Africa dreaming. So be it

Description

Based on a play by Wolé Soyinka, The Strong Breed, So Be It offers an emotionally searing allegory of present-day Africa's bloody internecine convulsions. Michael, an idealistic foreign doctor (Martinican star Alex Descas), has had little success bringing the promises of modernity to a dusty village of the damned in the Sahel. His lover, Sunma, a teacher and native of the place, has no illusions about the village, believing it to be "a world which will cannibalize its children" (according to a Wolof incantation) in a futile effort to compensate for human powerlessness. She simply wants to live and love - and leave before the killing starts. But Michael is transfixed; he stays and tries, ineffectively, to prevent the villagers from sacrificing a mentally disturbed mute boy he has befriended. Perhaps Michael sees in himself, even in his hope for scientific progress, a reflection of the villagers' own horror at human fate. Director Gai Ramaka has described the origins of this African Heart of Darkness: "I had to make this film to exorcize the terror of this continent, trapped inside me and driving me, so that on that day I will not be able to say, 'I did not know.'"

Runtime

32 minutes

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Geography

Genre

Database

Alexander Street

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