RFI is a little ahead of Wednesday’s releases with a film that takes us to the suburbs of Ndjamena, in Chad. In Lingui, the sacred bonds, Mahamat Saleh Haroun pays tribute to the women of her country by telling the story of a single mother discovering that Maria, her only 15-year-old daughter, is pregnant.
It is a fight that Mahamat Saleh Haroun films in Lingui, the desperate struggle of a woman for her daughter to have access to a world, to a future that has been forbidden to her.
For the first time, the Chadian filmmaker puts two women at the heart of his film. A courageous mother, Amina fights with all her might so that her pregnant daughter, perhaps as a result of rape, can have an abortion. Knowing that abortion in Chad is doubly condemned, by law and by religion.
► To read also: “Lingui”, feminist tale by Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
” Under these conditions, how do you expect a young woman aged 15 to be able to envision a sex life without having the possibility of disposing of her body? ? This is the question I tried to deal with in this movie “, reveals Mahamat Saleh Haroun.
How to dispose of your body and at what cost is the subject of the film. Amina will have to sell her jewelry, borrow money, beg her family for enough to pay for her daughter’s illegal abortion.
When I discovered this underground tragedy that women go through, I told myself that I could not help but talk about this. It was not possible. I like it when cinema takes on the subjects that people experience on a daily basis like that. Women are subjected to this, but at the same time they struggle quietly, because they are not given a voice. I believe that we have great lessons to learn from women in Africa. If we gave them a little more listening. In the resourcefulness, in the way of solving problems, I believe that there is something extraordinary
Mahamat Saleh Haroun conceived his film as a feminist tribute, also a tribute to lingui, specific to the Chadian culture.
” It is a precept of living together, which consists of permanent mutual aid when one is in the same community, loyalty to one’s own, solidarity. And that’s what they put into practice in reality », He explains.
Mahamat Saleh Haroun looks at the community of Chadian women, with a concern for truth and precision which does not prevent the emotion, nor the great humanity of her gaze.