(APS) – The film “Inchallah a boy” by director Amjad Al-Rasheed was screened Wednesday at the Economic and Social Sciences UFR of the Iba Der Thiam University of Thiès, as part of the 6th edition of the Africa Women Film Festival.
“Inshallah a boy”, set in Jordan, tells the story of a 30-year-old woman who, after the sudden death of her husband, must fight to obtain her share of the inheritance, in order to save her daughter and his rent, in a patriarchal society, where having a son would change the situation.
For Hadja Maï Niang, head of the Language, Letters and Human Sciences department of the Economic and Social Sciences UFR of the UIDT, this film highlights “the universality of women’s vulnerability”. Cases of women facing inheritance problems are often reported by the Senegalese media, she noted.
“It is a hymn to social transformation, showing that men and women must be side by side with dignity,” continues the academic, according to whom, “the heroine of the film teaches us that we can live hope by being a fighter for life, honor and dignity”.
This projection makes us feel the “need to resurrect the fact of being in communion in a room to follow a film”, she argued.
Initiated by the Trait d’union Association, founded in 1990 by a “group of French women living in mixed couples and keen to integrate harmoniously into their host country”, the Africa Women’s Film Festival held its first edition in 2003, note the organizers.
In its first phase, the 2024 edition screened in Dakar and its suburbs, from April 26 to May 4, 60 films telling the stories of African women, produced by young African directors, around the theme “Climate emergency and peace”, Jocelyne Guissé, who represented the Trait d’union association, told the press.
From May 5 to 10, the festival travels to the regions. He will be in Mbour, Fatick, Toubacouta, Kaolack, Kaffrine, Louga and Ziguinchor, she informs.
She was delighted with the “student side” of the Thiès stage and the “numerous reactions” aroused in the room by this film, proof, according to her, that “cinema is reborn”. “It is a guarantee of success to see here in Iba Der Thiam that there is a very young cinema section (…) (which) is just waiting to expand.”
The Africa Women’s Film Festival, which is held once every two years, is an opportunity to discover Senegalese films, from the continent and the diaspora, showing the condition of women, said Ms. Guissé.
