Lingui, The Sacred Bonds

Veteran Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun returns with this powerful tale of resilience and sisterhood. Amina is a single mother living on the outskirts of Chad, where she has built a life of her own since being exiled from her family for having a child young out of wedlock. A practising Muslim, she is shocked to discover that her 15-year-old daughter is pregnant and wants an abortion. Amina is faced with an impossible situation in a country where abortion is legally and morally condemned.

‘I know that it’s forbidden and I heard a lot of stories of young girls being pregnant and then have to get an abortion, and it’s a kind of a very difficult way to find a solution, because the family doesn’t agree with the abortion, and they don’t want you to keep the child either, because it’s shame for them. You lose your honor. So I made an investigation with women who have been in this kind of situation, and then I wrote the story. There, we have this thing we call Patriarca, which is just the dominating power of the men who are in charge who make these laws.’

Director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, from an interview in IndieWir.