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Suzannah Mirghani’s first feature contains a powerful performance by Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud as a village’s elder woman and tackles the long shadow of British imperialism and women’s rights
– mystery, matriarchs and magic in pioneering Sudanese debut Suzannah Mirghani’s first feature contains a powerful performance by Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud as a village’s elder woman and tackles the long shadow of British imperialism and women’s rightsdecide my past,” says a village matriarch in this intriguingly political and poetic drama from Suzannah Mirghani, making her feature debut – and with it becoming the first Sudanese woman to direct a feature.
It’s a film with things to say about the long shadow of the British empire, neocolonialism, women’s rights and female genital mutilation. But it mostly says it all without undermining its sense of mystery and shivers of magic realism. , where village elder Al-Sit is an iron-willed woman not to be messed with.
Everyone knows the story of how as a young girl she ran the British out of town; small children in the village gleefully tell the story of how she slaughtered every single last one of them. Can it possibly be true? The trauma of her past is at the centre of the film, and Mahmoud’s witchy performance, fierce and powerful, is utterly compelling. Al-Sit is arranging the marriage of her beloved 15-year-old granddaughter Nafisa .
But Nafisa’s mother has another husband in mind – businessman Nadir , who is of Sudanese heritage, but grew up abroad. He arrives in the village to flog farmers genetically modified cotton seeds manufactured by a multinational – and there is perhaps a sense here of history repeating itself, international interests trying to control local resources. Poetry-writing Nafisa is appalled by both husband options. She has a teenage crush on a sweet kid who grows onions.
But while fault lines are set for a showdown, the film is not really about who she should marry, but her ability to shape her own future. It’s not perfect, and its tonal shifts don’t always work, but you’re unlikely to see another film like it this year.
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