Burkina Faso / 1989 / 90mins / Historical Drama, Folklore / Mooré

Yaaba unfolds in the spectacular landscapes of rural Burkina Faso in a mythical time when peasant life was still unspoiled by colonialism. It is the story of a friendship between Bila, Nopoko and an old woman shunned as a witch by the rest of the community. Unafraid of her, twelve-year old Bila calls her “Yaaba” (grandmother) and learns the value of intolerance and his own worth as a human being. Ouédraogo, who shot the film in his own village, said that it was "based on tales of my childhood and on that kind of bedtime storytelling we hear just before falling asleep." Yaaba’s strikingly beautiful images, haunting rhythm and subtle interactions, bring back the enchantment generated by Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen and confirm Ouédraogo as a major voice in African cinema.

Idrissa Ouédraogo

Idrissa Ouédraogo was born in Banfora, Burkina Faso, in 1954. He trained at the African Institute of Cinematography in Ouagadougou, continued his studies in Kiev, USSR and Paris, France, and graduated from the Institut Des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques (IDHEC) in 1985. His work often explored the conflict between rural and city life and tradition and modernity in his native Burkina Faso and elsewhere in Africa. His first feature film, Yam Daabo, was presented at the Cannes Film Festival. This success was followed by Tilaï (1990), the winner of a special jury prize at Cannes and the Grand Prize at FESPACO in 1991. Yaaba and Samba Traoré were screened at the first New York African Film Festival in 1993. In 1997, Kini and Adams, a South African co-production, competed in Cannes. Ouédraogo also worked on a television series called Kadi Jolie and his feature The Wrath of the Gods opened the 2003 edition of FESPACO. Shortly after the end of the making of The Wrath of the Gods, Ouédraogo opted for a kind of cinema more closely adapted to the needs of Africans, to compete with the invasion of satellite images that are not representative of Africa. Ouédraogo passed away in February of 2018 at the age of 64, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Learn More