Moolaadé

Moolaadé

Moolaadé is a film created in the year 2004 by an African director called Ousmane Sembene. The film is about the feminine genital cutting and how it affects to the African population.Collé is the second of her husband's three wives. Her nubile daughter, Amasatou, has got engaged, although she had not undergone female genital cutting, which is considered a necessary thing to getmarried by the local tradition. Collé doesn’t agree practise and when little girls from the village ask her for help she doesn’t asks herself twice. This has led the elders in the village, men as well asother women, to despise her daughter. Amasatou herself unceasingly requests to have her genitals cut to secure her social status and marriagability, but Collé remains unmoved. She then pulls up asymbolic rope, the Moolaadé, across the gate of the family's premises. Moolaadé interdicts the old women, who carry out the practise and who have been searching for the girls, from entering the house.
Inthe beginning, the first wife seems to be against Collé's plan to protect the girls. However, later they become closer and she tells Collé that she also opposes female genital cutting and she triesto help her.
Collé explains her daughter that she does not want her to get cuttes because it can be fatal.
Her daughter's fiance Ibrahima, a rich, outstanding, and open-minded young man living inFrance, represents the audience that observes this barbaric tradition. With knowledge and technologies such as television, he returns to the village and receives the villagers' welcome. He witnesses afuneral of two little girls, who desperately drowned themselves in a well to avoid the mutilation of their genitals. The girl's relatives are very sad, but the incident does not lead the villagers toquestion their tradition. Ibrahima is shocked and worried by this scene. Meanwhile, Ibrahima's father wants him to renounce his engagement to Amasatou, and marry his innocent eleven year old cousin...