Yaaba

The film begins as it ends - at a run: twelve-year-old Bila (Noufou Quédraogo) and his cousin Nopoko (Roukietou Barry), who is about the same age, run barefoot through the dry savannah on the edge of the Sahel, first towards a cemetery and then away from a grave. In between, the film tells of stigmatization, friendship and growing up as it moves through the social upheavals of a hamlet in Burkina Faso that has been forgotten by modernity. Shot consistently from the children's point of view, Yaaba becomes a parable of elementary life full of complexity and contradiction, superstition and exclusion, male power and female self-determination. Ouédraogo's actors are all non-professionals, most of whom come from the village where the film was shot. With them, he composes shots of great stylistic care and condenses them into calm images full of tension, inner strength and humor. (T.W.)