Finzan (1989)
- Directed by
- Cheick Oumar Sissoko
- Country
- Mali
- Rating
- 5.9 of 10 from 7 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A widow in a Malian village is forced by tradition to marry her brother-in-law. She flees to the city, is captured and brought back, and eventually leaves to make her own future. The film also follows a young educated woman questioning village customs.
angryurgentconfrontationaleducationalsoberingboldsocially conscious
What happens
Finzan / A Dance for Heroes is a 1989 Malian film, the second feature film directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko. The Malian film critic Manthia Diawara welcomed the film, which deals with arranged marriage and female genital mutilation, as "an impassioned cry for the emancipation of African women [...] one of the boldest examples of socially engaged filmmaking to come out of Africa in recent years". The film opens with a shot of a mother goat nursing her kids, before cutting to a page of statistics from the World Conference on Women, 1980: A world profile on the condition of women reveals the striking effects of double oppression. Women are 50 percent of the world's population, do about two-thirds of its work, receive barely 10 percent of its income and own less than 1 percent of its property. The main character in Finzan is a widow, Nanyuma, expected by tradition to marry her brother-in-law, Bala. To avoid doing do, she escapes to the city, but is eventually captured, tied up, and sent back. Though forced to undergo the marriage ceremony, she refuses to consummate it, and eventually leaves the village to make her own future. In a subplot, a well-educated young women, Fili, questions female genital mutilation. In one of the film's final scenes, she Fili is captured by a group of women and forcibly excised. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
Finzan (1992)
Bamunan (1990)
Mother of the Dunes (1997)
Il était une fois l’indépendance (2009)
Tell Me Who You Are (2009)
Kennis Voor Het Leven (2005)
Fire! (1991)
Falato (1989)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.