Wend Kuuni (God's Gift)

Wend Kuuni was a landmark in African filmmakers' attempts to return to the sources of their culture, to recover a usable African past to solve the problems of the African present. Gaston Kaboré adapts the measured rhythms of traditional African storytelling to create an authentically African cinematic language. His film retells an ancient fable about a mute, memoryless orphan, driven from his homeland, who is renamed Wend Kuuni ("God's Gift") by the grateful village that adopts him. Kaboré uses this simple tale to demonstrate that traditional Mossi values such as hospitality and communal child-rearing can provide the answers to problems besetting modern Africa, for example, the growing number of refugees and homeless children. "A film of disarming sophistication and poetic irony." (Village Voice)

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