Lin­gui, the Sacred Bonds

Lin­gui is the Cha­di­an word for ​‘Sacred Bonds’, and in direc­tor Mahamat-Saleh Haroun​’s taut and poet­ic fea­ture, ques­tions of who and what we are indebt­ed to are both chal­lenged and reaffirmed.

Sin­gle moth­er Ami­na (Achouackh Abakar Souley­mane) is with­drawn from her devout Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, choos­ing to lead a dis­crete life with her 15-year-old daugh­ter Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio), who she puts through school by ardu­ous­ly fash­ion­ing wire stoves from dis­card­ed tyres. When Maria becomes preg­nant, claim­ing not to know how it hap­pened, she is expelled from school and defi­ant­ly refus­es to lead the same life as her moth­er, who was dis­card­ed by her fam­i­ly as she too became preg­nant as a teen.

Going against cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal norms, Maria demands an abor­tion. Lin­gui could be con­sid­ered sub­ver­sive in terms of what UK audi­ences expect of films about or from cen­tral Africa. Telling Ami­na and Maria’s sto­ry well is a prin­ci­pal­ly fem­i­nist under­tak­ing that Haroun han­dles with expert del­i­ca­cy. By treat­ing their sto­ry not as the type of polit­i­cal­ly-charged abor­tion dra­ma we see com­mon­ly in the West, but as a mother’s quest to redeem her life by help­ing her daugh­ter, Haroun stitch­es us into Amina’s shoes, and we share in her des­per­a­tion and tenacity.

Dur­ing the film’s 87-minute run­time we come to under­stand Amina’s unwa­ver­ing con­vic­tion through extreme close-ups. Haroun allows ample breath­ing room to absorb Souleymane’s strong and sub­tle per­for­mance, while moments of soli­tude – danc­ing, or smok­ing, or work­ing – encour­age us to wit­ness Amina’s trans­for­ma­tion into the moth­er she need­ed at her daugh­ters age.

As the nar­ra­tive advances and Ami­na has all-but-exhaust­ed the options avail­able to obtain an abor­tion for Maria, her estranged, monied sis­ter Fan­ta shows up unex­pect­ed­ly. Des­per­ate to pre­vent her own daugh­ter from an FGM pro­ce­dure that her hus­band insists on, Fan­ta and Ami­na become co-con­spir­a­tors, and the impor­tance of whis­per net­works between women rise to the fore­ground. But any jubi­la­tion is in secret, as the women col­lude for bet­ter lives cov­ered by the hum of street mar­kets and city traf­fic, obtain­ing their pro­ce­dures behind closed doors and in eerie silence.

A sequence towards the end of the film, where Ami­na and Maria try to find their way out of the nar­row, maze-like back­streets in their neigh­bour­hood, makes for a com­pelling hor­ror sequence. The claus­tro­pho­bic alley­ways, with their high walls and false exits – mir­ror their jour­ney and, in fact, the role soci­ety plays in keep­ing women walled in.

With Lin­gui, Haroun has cre­at­ed a qui­et ode to the women who hon­our their sacred bonds to one anoth­er. By cen­ter­ing a moth­er and daugh­ter unit­ed, instead of char­ac­ters in oppo­si­tion, he is able to under­line the ways we can sup­port each oth­er in the face of patri­ar­chal tyran­ny. Maybe this approach is Haroun empha­sis­ing that the tyrant doesn’t need anoth­er mega­phone, or a com­pelling face or back­sto­ry, because when we – in art and in life – look to them, we aren’t look­ing to each other.

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