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The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun

Djibril Diop Mambéty •   Senegal • ​  1999
45 mins  •  HD  •   PG
In French and Wolof with English subtitles


“A delightful slice of realism about a crippled girl who finds success as a seller of newspapers on the streets of Dakar…
​A charmer” ​– Variety

The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun screens with Le Franc

DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY: Djibril Diop Mambéty
PRODUCTION CO: Waka Films, Maag Daan
PHOTOGRAPHY: Jacques Besse
EDITOR: Sarah Taouss-Matton
MUSIC: Wasis Diop
WITH: Lissa Balera (Sili), Dieynaba Laam (Grandmother), Tayerou M'Baye (Babou Seck), Martin N'Gom (Gang Leader), Oumou Samb Crazy Woman)
​

FESTIVALS: Berlin, Toronto

REVIEWS

“Mambéty’s final film is brimming with colour and optimism, carried through by a central character blessed with ferocious resilience and executed with a glorious eye for detail… The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun is an essential classic of world cinema.”

​– James Hanton, Outtakes

​
“​An extraordinary twelve-year-old actor, Lissa Baléra, stars in the Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety’s final film, from 1999. Baléra plays Sili Laam, a girl from a shantytown outside Dakar who, despite a disability that requires her to use crutches, travels to the city and becomes an itinerant newspaper vender (the only female one there); she’s so successful that she incurs the resentment — and the violence — of her young male competitors, whom she faces down with courage and resilience. Mambety’s richly textured view of urban life fuses fiction and documentary, displaying the rampant poverty and endemic misogyny in the modernizing capital. With fable-like lyricism, he contrasts the bitter competition among the poor with exemplary acts of audacious solidarity — and shows the vital public culture that arises spontaneously from the struggles of street people. The movie is a virtual musical, featuring religious chants from a teacher of Islam, and songs that stream from a boom box in the lap of a wheelchair-bound amputee give rise to a street dance, led by Sili, that blends fantasy and practicality with joyful wonder.”

— Richard Brody, New Yorker



FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Dunedin     
Wednesday, 02 August, 7.30pm

Palmerston North     

Wednesday, 09 August, 6.00pm

Tauranga
Tuesday, 29 August, 6.00pm​

Canterbury
Monday, 11 September, 7.00pm


Nelson
Tuesday, 19 September, 6.00pm

Hamilton     

Monday, 02 October, 6.30pm

Whanganui     

Monday, 09 October, 7.00pm

​Wellington

Monday, 16 October, 6.15pm

​
New Plymouth
Wednesday, 25 October, 6.00pm​



MORE AFRICAN CINEMA >>

Picture
Picture
African Cinema is presented in
​co-operation with the Institut Français and the Embassy of France

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  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • SOCIETIES
    • AUCKLAND
    • HAMILTON
    • TAURANGA
    • NEW PLYMOUTH
    • WHANGANUI
    • PALMERSTON NORTH
    • CARTERTON
    • WELLINGTON
    • NELSON
    • CANTERBURY
    • TIMARU
    • OAMARU
    • QUEENSTOWN
    • DUNEDIN
    • WESTPORT
  • 2023 SEASON
    • JAPANESE CLASSICS
    • AUSTRALIAN CINEMA
    • NEW YORK ON SCREEN
    • WORLD & DOCUMENTARY
    • CULT & CLASSICS
    • NZ FILM
    • FRENCH CINEMA
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    • GERMAN CINEMA