A parable, based on legend, Wend Kuuni was a pioneering attempt to "Africanize" film language. Initiating the viewer into the rhythms, pace and sensibilities of village life in pre-colonial Mossi society, it draws one into a mode of storytelling that seems almost casually elliptical. But this narrative structure is intrinsic to the parable itself. Wend Kuuni, or "Gift of God," is the name given to a young boy who is found in the bush, half-dead and unable to speak; adopted by a farmer who raises him alongside his own delightfully spunky daughter, the boy remains mute until the day a trauma brings back memory, and with it, language. "Without family or village ties, he literally loses his history and his language, his memory and speech...Gaston Kaboré looks to the past to see how the traditional Mossi society of Burkina Faso dealt with many of the same challenges facing the country today...displacement, individualism...(How) tolerance, generosity and cooperation can shape and bind a society in the face of bigotry, infidelity and cruelty." (Mbye Cham, Library of African Cinema, California Newsreel, Cornelius Moore, ed.)