FAAT KINE

Chic, sexy, single and a working mother, the title heroine shares a birthday with the same year that Senegal won independence. In other words, both our thoroughly liberated, although males in Dakar seem a little slow to realize it about Faat Kine. Especially the different fathers of her two children, each of whom betrayed her in turn. Even her own father wanted to kill her when she was born, for the crime of not being a son. When Faat Kine gets an entry-level job in a gas station she weathers the inevitable sexual discrimination and innuendoes to prove herself, climbing the ladder of promotions. She will settle for no less a goal than becoming manager for an oil multinational. Ousmane Sembene (“Xala,” 1st CIFF), one of Africa's most eminent filmmakers, offers a hopeful portrait of female advancement in Senegalese society – and a catchier title than “Erin Brockovich.” This is no fairy tale, however, but a realistic depiction of a post-colonial nation scarred by poverty, disease, graft and ignorance, caught between backwardness and teh contradictory benefits of “globalization;” and the spirit it takes to compete and win. Her way. (In Wolof with English subtitles.