This beautifully photographed film from Upper Volta is a parable based on a legend about a foundling who became mute when he saw his mother die. The film is set in an unspecified period in precolonial Africa. Little Wend Kuuni (played by Serge Yanogo) and his mother are ousted from their tribe after she refuses to remarry. When she dies, Wend Kuuni becomes mute from shock. Adopted by a neighboring tribe, he befriends a little girl who is mistreated by her mother, and together they wile away the time until another trauma reactivates his memory of his mother's death. God's Gift contrasts the simplicity and slow-paced lyricism of its depiction of village life with the reality of certain customs: Wend Kuuni's mother, in rejecting a new man, is ousted as a witch, and in his adopted tribe, he views a similar incident: a wife who, in rejecting her husband, rejects tribal mores.