OUEDRAOGO IDRISSA 

Born in 1954 in Banfora, Burkina Faso. Lives in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

La Mangue, 2008

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Koro, a 6-year-old girl, picks up a mango stone, holds it in her hands and later buries it in the ground in a public square, ignoring friends who are laughing at her. She waters the growing  plant  and tries to protect it,  while people continuously step on it. Day after day, the girl takes care of the plant which is, just like her, growing and growing. When Koro – now a woman – falls in love and gives birth to her own child, ripe mangoes are falling from the tree. The film ends with Koro’s young daughter who collects a mango stone and plants it in the village.

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Idrissa Ouédraogo is a film director from Burkina Faso who creates films set within Africa, often exploring the conflict between rural and urban, and tradition and modernity. In 1986, Idrissa Ouedraogo directed his first feature film, Le choix. In 1988, the film Yaaba was released and won the Film Critics Award at Cannes in 1989 and the FESPACO Audience Award in the same year. In 1990, he directed Tilaï, the transposition of a Greek tragedy into contemporary Africa and won the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes in 1990 as well as the Étalon de Yennenga (the Grand Prize) at FESPACO in the same year. His film Le Cri du coeur (1994), obtained the Audience Award at the 5th African Film Festival in Milan the following year. At the 8th edition of the festival in 1998, he received the Award for Best Feature Film for Kini et Adams (1997). In 2003, he directed La Colère des dieux and in 2006 Kato Kato. Idrissa Ouedraogo is a Commandeur de l’Ordre National of Burkina Faso and Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres françaises. In 2008, he contributed to the film project Stories on Human Rights, produced by ART for The World.

La Mangue, 2008
Burkina Faso, HD, col.,3 min. 6 sec.
episode from the film Stories
on Human Rights, An ART for The World production, Geneva