Le Monologue de la muette

Why should the emancipation of some be had at the price of the submission of others?

It is while observing Amy, a young maid in Dakar from the Senegalese countryside, that Khady Sylla formulates this powerful and impassioned reflection, which resonates not only in the present of the film but across a broader span of African history. The film gives these often illiterate maids, who suffer the moral violence of their employers, a space for expression rarely opened to them. The mute girl of the title is Amy but also the image itself, a dumb image that only the voice of Khady Sylla – who speaks, distributes words and builds her many-voiced monologue – can awaken.

M.M.