Idrissa Ouedraogo’s award-winning film The Law (Tilài, 1990) is a tale of a family of Burkinabe villagers and how they negotiate the perplexities of family, kinship and tradition.



Trudging through the arid and bare Burkinabe landscape, Saga (Rasmane Ouedraogo) arrives in his village, following a long hiatus, only to find that the woman, Nogma (Ina Cissé), promised to him is now wedded to his father. Incensed, Saga decides to leave the village and builds a hut on the outskirts. Nogma and Saga commence an affair which is deemed incestuous by traditional law, a crime for which he faces death. His brother Kougri (Assane Ouedraogo) lets him live only to be his final slayer at the end of the film.

In Idrissa’s timeless Burkina Faso, the code of honour is paramount. It transcends filial, paternal and maternal sensibilities - an absurdity emphasized by Saga’s murder at his brother Kougri’s hands. Long takes and vast empty spaces dwarf the characters – isolated by natural and social insularities. Abdullah Ibrahim’s spare music syncs with the cinematic exposition of an inevitable descent into tragedy. The pure abjectness of love and longing finds expression in the minimalist but classical cinematic techniques employed by Idrissa. Saga and Nogma’s love-nest in a distant village fails to shelter them from calamity. Saga’s father’s righteous anger is the root of tragedy – it leads to the death of his son as well as Nogma’s father Tenga.

Rasmane imbues Saga with passion and a sense of humour – effective weapons of a rebellious generation. Assane makes Kougri a brooding and pensive mediator. The narrative approaches the climactic sequences with the grace of a loping run, significant in a land where men and women walk enormous lengths to reach one another, a land where interaction among strangers are brief and subsequent courtships are briefer.

Manish Golder
© FIPRESCI 2008