Mossane (1996)
Directed by Safi Faye
The 71-year-old Senegalese filmmaker Faye was born in Dakar to villager parents and eventually chose to study cinema in Paris. In the 1970s she began making films about the lives of rural people—and particularly women—like ones she knew growing up. Her most recent film tells the fictional tale of a fourteen year-old girl (played by Magou Seck) in the real-life village of Mbissel who has been betrothed from birth to a wealthy older man long based in France. In his absence, Mossane finds herself admired by many—including her bedridden brother Ngor (Alpha Diof), whose feelings for her have driven him sick—and devotes herself to Fara (Alioune Konaré), an impoverished student who has returned to town during his university’s strike. The lovestruck young woman considers how defying the fate to which she has been decreed would bring shame upon her and her family. She also comes to believe that, though her village’s elders have established one set of rules to guide her earthly life, the laws of Nature command something different. Aaron Cutler (May 12, 9pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “New York African Film Festival 2015”)