Guled & Nasra
Three features at the Toronto International Film Festival turn the spotlight on the best and brightest in African filmmaking. African Cinema has produced some fantastic gems over the past several years that nearly no one will mention in their end of year lists. From mythical fables like Kati Kati, Luwalu, and Mimosas to political tragedies like The Fig Tree, Clash, Wulu, and Our Lady of the Nile, to films on identity and alienation like The Wound, to personal reflections of land and colonialism like Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s two films Mother I am Suffocating, This is My Last Film About You and This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection – both masterpieces – this is a continent creating some of the best of the world’s cinema right now and with good volume. So naturally, I had to seek out a few African films this year, starting with The Gravedigger's Wife. The Gravedigger’s Wife functions similarly to Ousmanne Sembene’s classic Mandabi, where a husband’s struggles with money is at the whims of both an economy that’s over his head and at the mistreatment and deception by his own family members. Guled (Omar Abdi) is a gravedigger who needs more money for his wife Nasra’s (Yasmin Warsame) cancer treatment. He is willing to go to the village where his family is but his wife is distraught at the thought, so he looks around for work nearby. He lives in the outskirts of Djibouti, struggling to find adequate pay for odd jobs. Continue Reading →