Assita Ouedraogo Movies

A young man born into criminal circumstances is forced to deal with his conscience in this drama from Belgium. Roger (Olivier Gourmet) is a corrupt businessman who smuggles illegal aliens into Antwerp and protects them from the law in exchange for working with his construction company. However, Roger pays meager wages for back-breaking labor and charges aliens appallingly high rent for substandard housing. Roger has a 15-year-old son, Igor (Jeremie Renier), who has learned from his father to steal and twist the truth; Igor is loyal to Roger, despite his father's frequent violence against him. One day, Amidou (Rasmane Ouedraogo), one of the illegals working for Roger, falls from a construction site; as he is dying, Amidou begs Igor to watch over his wife Assita (Assita Ouedraogo) and their child. While Roger and his partners try to keep the death a secret to avoid police interference, Igor constructs an elaborate web of lies to ease the concerns of Assita, who does not know that her husband has passed. Before long, Igor's loyalties are torn between his concern for his father's safety and his guilty affection for Assita. La Promesse was voted the Best Foreign Language Film of 1997 by America's National Society of Film Critics. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The unbending nature of village law wreaks havoc upon an all-too human family in this unusual film from the tiny nation of Burkina Faso. In the story, a young man has fallen in love with and become affianced to a young woman, which is not too strange. But then his father swiftly exercises his customary parental prerogatives, and marries the girl instead. Now the boy's fiancee has officially become his mother, and his father's second wife. The distraught lovers run away together, but are actively sought by the otherwise easygoing village authorities for having (technically) committed the crime of incest. When the man's other son pretends to have carried out the father's decree that the boy be killed for having disgraced the family name, he, too, suffers. Finally, the father suffers from his bewilderment at how his being so clearly in the right can cause such disasters. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A family struggles to survive the harsh drought and deadly famine in this engaging drama. A farming family consisting of an aging mother and father travel South with their young son Ali, their marriageable daughter Bintou, and her sweetheart Salam. When they stop in the city to sell their donkey, young Ali is struck by a car and killed. The group continues and eventually meets up with friends who take in the beleaguered travelers. Bintou and Salam anticipate the birth of their baby when the family reaches the lush greenery of the South. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi