The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun
Short Films and Mid-Lengths
•
44m
Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty | 45 mins | 1999
Djibril Diop Mambéty, a towering figure in world cinema, is best known for his two features, Touki Bouki (1973) and Hyenas (1992, re-released in a new restoration by Metrograph Pictures in 2019). Yet these two extraordinary films tell only part of the story of the director’s enormous accomplishments in his too-brief life. Two of the masterpieces of the medium-length form (commonly referred to as a featurette or moyen métrage) that Mambéty completed in his final years provide us a fuller picture of the elements that define his small, but perfect, filmography—a rich social vision, sly humor, and formal ingenuity. Mambéty initially meant for these films to lead off a trilogy to be titled “Tales of Ordinary People,” but sadly lived only to complete Le Franc and The Little Girl Who Sold The Sun. It is with great pleasure that we present two major works by one of contemporary cinema’s greatest filmmakers. Metrograph Pictures releases.
Both films were restored in 2K by Waka Films in 2019 with the support of the Institut français – Cinémathèque Afrique and the CNC at Éclair Laboratories from the original negative.
Up Next in Short Films and Mid-Lengths
-
The Silent Monologue
Directed by Khady Sylla | 45 mins | 2008
Khady Sylla’s docudrama inquiry into the lives—inner and exterior—of Dakar’s female domestics, which employs scenes of improvised street theater, direct-address freestyle screeds, candid interviews, and inner monologue musings with the end of allowing its ... -
Will You Look At Me
Directed by Shuli Huang | 20 mins | 2022
Winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes 2022, Shuli Huang’s evocative Super 8 confessional tracks the queer filmmaker’s return to his hometown of Beijing and the ensuing conversation with his mother, long disapproving of her son’s sexuality and his pursuit of a... -
Buffalo Juggalos
Directed by Scott Cummings | 30 mins | 2014
Smeared in gaudy face-paint and dedicated as much to the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse as they are to generalized debauchery and destruction, the Juggalo remains one of fan culture’s most enduring—and most derided—outsider figures. In his experimental ...
