Tilai aka The Law
Director; Idrissa Ouedraogo, Burkina Faso/Switzerland/France, 1990, 83 min, 16mm Tilai, Ouedraogo's third feature, won the Cannes Grand Jury Prize in 1990. This beautiful film, shot in Burkina Faso, one of Africa's poorest nations, represents cinema without frills. A man rides back to his village across a parched landscape, a solitary tree on the horizon. Characters speak with simple dignity. Slowly but surely we are pulled into the story about a fateful clash between love and the dictates of tilai. A villager returns home after two years away, discovers his former fiancee is now his father's second wife, meets her secretly and finds himself condemned by the village elders for incest. The penalty is death but the man's brother, chosen to execute him, plans to circumvent the law. It isn't half as simple as it seems though. Tilai sticks in the memory not just because it is so genuine but because right down to its soundtrack by Abdullah Ibrahim, it is all of a piece. - Derek Malcolm, The Guardian. Internet Movie Database listing
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