Les Films Terre Africaine

When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.

In Cameroon, new schoolteacher Bernard Malo Malo is about to shake up the small village of Lebamzip. Sensitive to libertarian ideas, he doesn't hesitate to discuss politics and sexuality with his pupils. And when he suggests that the farmers form a cooperative, confrontation with the notables becomes inevitable...

A film about the difficulty for even the most well-intentioned person to know and respect another culture. In this case, the problem is so acute that there is even heated debate over what to call that 'other.' The subtitles in the film use the familiar word 'pygmies,' a relatively pejorative European term; the Bantu or villagers' expression for the same group, Babingas, carries similar negative connotations. These highly specialized, tropical rainforest hunter-gatherers should perhaps be called by their own ethnonym, Aka, MoAka (sing.) and BaAka (pl.)