Princess of Africa

This 2009 SIFF selection is a nicely hyped tale of a 14-year-old girl from Senegal. It appears to be a documentary about her aspirations to be a dancer. It seems that her father's third wife is a professional dancer from Spain and our princess wants to emulate her.

This turned out to be a quasi-documentary that looked more like a home movie: it featured lots of interpretive dancing, i.e., writhing hips, waving arms, twirling and smiling. The wife from Spain meets the local wives and everyone loves everyone else. They included an explanation that the men in Senegal are allowed to have four wives and I couldn't help but wonder what they do with all the surplus unmarried men...

At one point most of the people being filmed seemed to be crying, but we never figured out why. The final narrative says the girl from Senegal has come to realize that she doesn't like Spain so she is going home.

Nah, this was NOT worth our time...