Senegal / 1997 / 26mins / Drama / French and Wolof

Michael, an idealistic foreign doctor, has had little success bringing the promises of modernity to a dusty village of the damned in the Sahel. His lover, Sunma, a teacher and native of the place, has no illusions about the village, believing it to be "a world which will cannibalize its children" (according to a Wolof incantation) in a futile effort to compensate for human powerlessness. She simply wants to live and love - and leave before the killing starts. But Michael is transfixed; he stays and tries, ineffectively, to prevent the villagers from sacrificing a mentally disturbed mute boy he has befriended. Perhaps Michael sees in himself, even in his hope for scientific progress, a reflection of the villagers' own horror at human fate. Based on the play The Strong Breed, by Wolé Soyinka.

Joseph Gaï Ramaka

Joseph Gaï Ramaka was born in 1952 in St. Louis, Senegal. After completing studies in visual anthropology at the Paris School of Social Sciences and film studies at the IDHEC, Ramaka created the French production and distribution company, Les Ateliers de l’Arche, in 1990. The Senegalese branch of this company opened the Bell’Arte space in Senegal in 1999, a Dolby stereo-equipped screening facility. This in turn jump-started the creative work of the Arche Studios, West and Central Africa’s first 15,000 square meter sound stage with computerized lighting. Some of Ramaka's films include And What If Latif Was Right winner of Best Documentary Film Award at the Vues d'Afrique Festival - Montreal 2006, Karmen Geï (2000, Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals), Ainsi soit-il (1997, Short Film Prize at Vues d’Afrique), Nitt...N’doxx / Les Faiseurs de Pluie (1988), and Baaw-Naan / Rites de Pluie (1985). He established the New Orleans Afrikan Film Festival in 2007 and in 2013, he created Gorée Island Cinema, a space for encounters and cinematographic creations, which has presented the Gorée Cinema Festival since 2015.

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