The cut and thrust of debate on the anti-FGM movement
Daniel Nelson
Koromousso: Big Sister is a documentary about female genital mutilation - and it’s heartwarming.
It’s not that the film ducks the truth - that FGM is an insufferable manifestation of male control and distorted ideas about purity. It spells that out from the start, along with the dismissal of the suggestion that cutting demands support out of respect for other cultures.
No, it’s positive and life-affirming because the central characters, a trio of African-Canadian women, are so frank and open, so friendly, so quietly honest, so determined, so warmly humane, that they lift your hope that this crazy practice can be stopped.
They talk about the pain, astonishment and confusion of being cut, the subsequent silence of their families, how they feel about their mothers who let it happen (“She said she didn’t really have a reason”), their anger, the personality changes, the feeling of being a lesser woman (“I want the piece of me that’s missing.”).
They also talk about - and experience - reconstructive surgery, which sparks more truth-telling and laughter (there’s a lot of laughter): about finding the money for the operation, choosing a surgeon, of the awkward post-surgery “duck walk” and the first orgasm.
Their mutual support and positivity is wonderfully captured, and buttressed by a handful of talking heads, who thankfully are not allowed to take over the film’s essentially joyful atmosphere - best illustrated when a surprised diner learns that the mysterious object she has been given is a model of a clitoris.
The warmth is such that you forget that however great their personal victories, such as reversing the cutting by reconstructive surgery, are a tiny success when measured against estimates that more than 200 million girls and women alive today around the world have been cut and that unless efforts are stepped up 86 million more will be be mangled by a razor blade in the next decade.
It’s a horrible truth, but when the world has women like these you can be forgiven for being optimistic.
* Koromousso: Big Sister is showing at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London, 16-26 March 2023, Info: HRW’s 10 top films
+ The film is Habibata Ouarme’s first feature-length documentary. Her family roots are in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. She recently received a Canada Council for the Arts grant for her next project, 1001 couronnes pour ma tête, a historical and cultural exploration of African and Afrodescendant headdresses. Ouarme sits on the board of RAFIQ, a non-profit organisation assisting immigrant and racialiszed women in Quebec.