Moolaade - fristaden

Moolaadé

...SembÞne again employs a mixture of patriarchal satire and humanist melodrama to highlight the unequal struggle between progress and tradition.

Sembène's passionate story asks hard questions of African societies that continue to tolerate it, and also timid western liberals scared of criticising it, for fear of being dubbed cultural imperialists.

Sembene embodies his subject so deeply with his characters, and especially with his heroine Colle, that it becomes a story about will, defiance, and ancient custom.

In Ousmane Sembene's Moolaadé, the conflict is not between different tribes of people but between men and women, and the issue is not genocide but female circumcision, a mandate of mutilation some continue to believe is required by Islam.