Film: Ouaga Girls

A film by Theresa Traore Dahlberg (2016, 80 min.). Screening followed by Q&A with director Theresa Traore Dahlberg, Abosede George, and Nora Phliippe

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To view the trailer, click here.

Part of the film series “Blackness in French and Francophone Film” organized by the Columbia Maison Française and co-sponsored by the School of the Arts.

A group of young women tweak machines and hammer away at a school for auto mechanics in Ouagadougou in this poetic story about life choices, sisterhood and the endeavor to find one’s own way. In a country with youth unemployment at 52 percent, jobs are a hot issue. The young girls at a mechanics school in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, are at a crucial point in life when their dreams, hopes, and courage are confronted with opinions, fears, and social expectations about women. Using interesting narrative solutions, Theresa Traore Dahlberg depicts their last school years and also succeeds in showing the country’s violent past and present. This is a feature-film debut and coming-of-age film with warmth, laughter, heartbreak and depth.

Columbia University co-sponsors of Blackness in French and Francophone Film: Maison Française; School of the Arts; Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality; Institute for African Studies; Columbia Global Centers/Paris; European Institute; Institute for Research in African-American Studies; Teachers College Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Affairs; and Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities.

Film series presented with support from the Paul LeClerc Centennial Fund, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, la Scam, and the Knapp Family Foundation.