BFI London Film Festival: The Wedding Ring

BFI Film Festival: 245 features. 74 countries. 15 cinemas. 12 days. One Festival.

This rare film from Niger, a simple love story, is beautifully narrated in the Sahel tradition, with an added dash of cynicism regarding the politics of race. Striking Nigerien actress Magaajyia Silberfeld plays young Tiyaa, a member of a prestigious aristocratic family. She has come back home to the sultanate of Damagaram from her studies in Paris. While there, she met an equally privileged young man whose family comes from a village not far from her own. Life is pleasant and peaceful following Tiyaa’s return, but time passes and the handsome suitor is slow in visiting. Meanwhile, Tiyaa has the opportunity to discover in her surroundings other women whose stories of love, marriage, desertion and divorce reveal the truth of the relationships between women and men in Sahelian society.

The Wedding Ring is a stark but surprisingly tender and beautifully-made film from a country that rarely features in the news yet constantly questions and has actively resisted change from the outside world.

(Notes by Keith Shiri)

The Wedding Ring (Zin'naariyâ!), dir. Rahmatou Keïta, Niger/Burkina Faso/France 2016, 96 mins, cert. 15.

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