Burkina Faso / 1987 / 80mins / Drama / More

Poverty and misery are rife in Gourga, a village in the Sahel. The inhabitants must choose: stay and await international assistance or leave for more fertile regions in the country.

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