African Film Archive

La Femme au couteau (The Woman with the Knife)

1969 — Timite Bassori — Ivory Coast

feature · drama · liberation

Considered the first fiction feature made in Ivory Coast, this film follows a young Ivorian intellectual who returns home after years in Europe and struggles to readjust, weaving Freudian motifs into a traditional narrative structure, with director Timite Bassori playing the lead role himself.

Fun fact: It premiered at the very first edition of FESPACO, then called the Festival panafricain du cinema et de la television de Ouagadougou, in 1969.

Notes: Restored by Cineteca di Bologna and The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project with funding from the George Lucas Family Foundation.

Verification: verified · Sources: [1] [2] [3]

Poster source: Wikipedia