2000s

The opening sequence of Ousmane Sembene’s Faat Kiné shows us the complexity of urban motion in a place where modernity and traditionalism are still somewhat at odds. We see groups of women in traditional Senegalese dress walking through the city of Dakar. Then, the camera pulls further and further away from them until we can see can see a whole city block.

I was on holiday with two of my closest friends last week. Amidst the flow of beer, the puffing of cigarettes and the non-stop giggling, the conversation turned to our grandmothers. We talked about how our grandmothers had grown up in such a different time to ourselves, how we are (as women) afforded things that our grandmothers would never have been.

A predominantly accelerated 15-year-old called William Miller (Patrick Fugit) is embarrassingly out of sync with his snarling high-school mates. His mother Elaine (Frances McDormand) is an English teacher who worries about William’s influences and invites rowdy laughter from his classmates when she shouts, “Don’t take drugs!” to him while dropping him off.