YAABA Movie Review

This sweetly stirring and eloquent film from Burkina Faso's Idrissa Ouedraogo is the story of a 12-year-old boy who bravely befriends an old woman, even though she's been shunned by her village for being a witch. The boy's affection for her leads to his calling her “yaaba” (grandmother), but soon the social pressures of his daily life and his responsibilities to the others in the community force the boy to make some difficult and very grownup decisions. Ouedraogo's serene, charming, and piercingly humane fable is told in a straightforward and pleasingly unhurried manner; though it captures the quality of a classic folk tale, it never loses sight of the troubled feelings of its characters, nor does it ever go soft at its center. Suggesting an oft-told legend that might be passed on by a traditional African storyteller—a “griot”—Yaaba was described by its director as being “based on tales of my childhood, and on that kind of bedtime storytelling we hear just before falling asleep.”

NEXT STOP … Tilaï, Pather Panchali, Forbidden Games, La Promesse

1989 90m/C Assita Ouedraogo, Rasmane Ouedraogo, Fatimata Sanga, Noufou Ouedraogo, Roukietou Barry, Adama Ouedraogo, Amade Toure, Sibidou Ouedraogo, Adame Sidibe, Kinda Moumouni, Zenabou Ouedraogo, Ousmane Sawadogo; D: Idrissa Ouedraogo; W: Idrissa Ouedraogo; C: Matthias Kalin; M: Francis Bebey. NYR