Visions of female emancipation: three recent films from West Africa

Although female directors are hugely underrepresented in the West African film industries, as is the case in film industries the world over, an increasing number of women are directing documentaries, shorts and fiction feature films. Female directors from West Africa often foreground female themes in their films and place female characters at the centre of their filmic narratives, focusing on issues such as motherhood, generational knowledge and difference, female solidarity and collectivity, and gender complementarity. This article analyses three recent films from West Africa directed by women one short, one fiction feature film and one documentary which are all set in rural Burkina Faso. The article proposes that the central focus on women in the three films should be regarded as significant progressive acts that ultimately become visions of female emancipation in West Africa.