桑巴特拉奥

Idrissa Ouedraogo’s Yam Daabo (1987), in which the child of a peasant family is killed in a traffic accident in the big city, and the same director’s Samba Traoré (1992), is about a prodigal son who returns to the village after having committed armed robbery in the capital. The movie combines the conflicts between tradition and change and the city versus the village into the life of a single character. The quality of life in the city is demonstrated in the rapid violent images that open the film. It is worth noting, however, that usually the films do not set up tradition and modernity as two irreconcilable poles of an abstract dichotomy. Rather, the subject is depicted as a lived reality in a country whose urban centers form an integral part of global modernity, whereas the vast rural areas still largely adhere to tradition.