The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun

This was to be Djibril Diop Mambéty’s second film in a trilogy called Tales of Ordinary People, but it was instead his last film, as he died during its making. Nonetheless, it is a loving yet unsentimental “hymn to the courage of street children.” Feisty and fearless Sili sets out to earn a living by hawking the newspaper Le Soleil (The Sun), the only girl in a sea of boys. Mambéty closed his masterpiece, “This tale is thrown to the sea. The first to breathe it will go to heaven.” He left this gift on his own way there.