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24 August 2017: Faat-Kiné

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Faat-Kiné
Ousmane Sembène
2000 | 118 min | Colour | Digital

Faat-Kiné, the manager of a sparkling new gas station, drives an elegant car, lunches with fashionably dressed friends, and worries about her children passing their high school finals. But Sembène contextualizes his heroine’s thoroughly modern triumphs and anxieties within the complex culture and politics of Dakar, with its contrastive architecture of shantytowns and high-rises, streets crowded with cattle and Mercedes, and women whose lives have been shaped as much by tribal custom and male prejudice as by their twenty-first century aspirations. As it examines the changing roles of women in Senegalese society, Faat-Kiné opens onto a new chapter in the career of this legendary director.” – Harvard Film Archive


Part of our season on Ousmane Sembène