Sisters In Law

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Sisters in Law, directed by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Winner of the Prix Art et Essai at Cannes, and screened to acclaim at more than 120 festivals worldwide, Sisters In Law is one of Longinotto’s best known works. Sisters features the awe-inspiring work of two visionary women determined to change their community in Kumba, Cameroon. State Prosecutor Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba help women fight difficult cases of abuse, battling against the fact that there have been no convictions in spousal abuse cases for 17 years in Kumba. Six-year-old Manka is covered in scars and has run away from an abusive aunt; Amina seeks a divorce to put an end to brutal beatings by her husband; pre-teen Sonita has daringly accused her neighbour of rape. With fierce compassion, the two feisty and progressive-minded women dispense wisdom, wisecracks, and justice in fair measure, handing down stiff sentences to those convicted. - Shannon Abel.

White Material

Showing this weekend at the Venice Film Festival: White Material, directed by Claire Denis

Synopsis from the Venice Film Festival's website:

No more smirking. We’re stopping the bullshit right now and staying put. The regular army is preparing to reestablish order in the country. To clean up. To eliminate the rebel officer also known as the Boxeur and rid the countryside of roving child soldiers. All the expatriates have gone home, getting out before things turn nasty. Of the Vials, coffee planters who have lived here for two generations, Maria stands firm. She’s not about to give in to rumors or abandon her harvest at the first sound of gunfire. Just like her father-in-law and her exhusband who is also the father of her son (a little too much of a slacker in her opinion) she is convinced that Cherif, mayor of the neighboring town, will protect them. If she asks him he will save the plantation.

Netflix It: Chocolat

Chocolat, not to be confused with the 2000 Lasse Hallström movie of the same title, tells the semi-autobiographical story of Claire Denis’s childhood in northern Cameroon. The film opens with a shot of an African father and son playing in the surf, as a young white woman sits nearby, listening to her Walkman. The young woman, (a bit heavy-handedly) named France Dalens, has just returned to Cameroon at the beginning of the film, and most of the film plays out in extended flashback, exploring the dynamic in the household among the members of the Dalens family, their various European houseguests and their African servants. France’s mother, Aimée, and the head servant, Protée, manage to communicate (to us, and to everyone else in the film but M. Dalens) their quiet but powerful sexual attraction with a bare minimum of smoldering glances. Not exactly a plot-driven movie, Chocolat (whose title derives from 1950s French slang for being cheated) takes its time exploring the thoughtless humiliations of colonialism’s dying days (including, but obviously not limited to, public outdoors showers for the servants). Definitely worth checking out if you are in a contemplative mood, Chocolat is the first film of a trilogy that includes S’en fout la mort and J’ai pas sommeil.

 A plus for Francophiles: the DVD has the option of French subtitles.

There's an interesting essay about the film here, and an interview with Claire Denis about Chocolat and S'en fout la mort here, but be forewarned: there are minor spoilers. (However, as noted, it's not like there is a twist ending or any shocking revelations.) Also, the New York Times loved the hell out of this movie back in 1988.