Written and Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Starring: Achouackh Abakar Souleymane, Rihane Khalil Alio, and Youssouf Djaoro
Unrated
Runtime: 87 minutes
Opens at the Film Forum in NYC on February 4

by Ryan Smillie, Staff Writer

Unfortunately, Lingui, the Sacred Bonds has a logline that could place it in many settings today: a single mother and her 15-year-old daughter face governmental restrictions, religious hypocrisy, and a patriarchal society in a quest to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. This same plot could easily play out in Poland, the Philippines, or many parts of the United States, but director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Lingui finds its heroines in the Sahel region of Chad, eking out a living in the markets of N’Djamena.

Raising her daughter alone, Amina (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane) has managed to build a life for herself by making and weaving old car wires into baskets. It’s not an easy or lucrative life, but she and her daughter Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio) have their own makeshift home, Maria’s enrolled in a fancy school, and they’re welcomed by a growing Muslim community. Though they live towards the margins of society, Haroun is sure to emphasize the colors of their world – the women’s bright, tie-dyed lafai, the sheer pastel curtains against the metal panels of their home. And the casual presence of cell phones and headphones shows a non-Chadian viewer that this isn’t some land that the 21st century forgot. Rather, Amina, Maria, and their friends and neighbors are connected to the modern world, just not able to share in all of its spoils. 

But this life is turned upside down when Amina finds out that Maria is pregnant and has been expelled from school. To make matters worse, in Amina’s eyes at least, Maria wants to have an abortion – a procedure that is forbidden by their faith and severely restricted by their government. Eventually, Amina softens and reveals that she too got pregnant as a teenager and was also expelled from school. She was disowned by her family, abandoned by Maria’s father, and forced to raise her daughter on her own. Amina is determined that the same fate won’t befall her daughter, so there’s no question – she’ll help Maria get an abortion.

Abakar Soulemayne and Khalil Alio anchor the film with impressive performances that pair nicely with Haroun’s at-times elliptical direction. Smartly refraining from over-explaining or over-dramatizing, Haroun allows his leading ladies to move the plot along, their emotions and reactions carrying us from one scene to the next. Khalil Alio’s headstrong Maria feels like she could be a Gen Z teenager in any country – a little moody, a little impulsive, and more eager than older generations to call out hypocrisy when she sees it.

But Lingui truly belongs to Abakar Soulemayne, who commands the screen as the determined Amina. Whether hard at work on her kanoun, making a desperate attempt to get money for Maria, or taking revenge on Maria’s behalf, her Amina is fully committed and impossible to take your eyes off of. Haroun’s camera agrees, capturing just as much with one extended close-up as is expressed with any line of dialogue in the film.  

Their quest for an abortion finds Amina and Maria disillusioned by their religion and facing the corruption of their government and the wickedness of their neighbors. The titular lingui, a Chadian term denoting the bonds or connections that keep society afloat, seem to be absent. But hope is not lost. While lingui may have fallen out of favor for the men who dictate the terms of Amina and Maria’s lives, the women of N’Djamena quietly live by that principle. In the end, it’s not only medical care that the women of their community are able to provide, but reconciliation and solidarity as well.