Yaaba | Telescope Film
Yaaba

Yaaba

User Rating

  • Burkina Faso,
  • Switzerland,
  • France
  • 1989
  • · 90m

Director Idrissa Ouédraogo
Cast Fatimata Sanga, Noufou Ouédraogo, Roukietou Barry, Adama Ouédraogo, Amadé Toure, Sibidou Ouédraogo
Genre Drama, Family

A ten-year-old boy from a small village makes an unexpected friend in an elderly woman named Sana. She calls herself "grandmother" but everybody calls her a witch. When the boy's cousin falls ill, the boy turns to Sana for help, and she concocts a medicine that saves the child's life, challenging her public perception.

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What are critics saying?

100

Empire by John Minson

A wonderful portrait of Third World life that will leave you with a sense of real peace.

90

Sight & Sound by Jill Forbes

The other source of Yaaba's appeal, however, is its capacity to evoke universal truths by recounting simple events and so to transcend the confines of village, state or even continent.

85

Chicago Reader by Ronnie Scheib

Its directness breeds an intimacy, a sense of familiarity. By the film’s end we know every mud-bricked courtyard and intersection of the tiny village...

80

Los Angeles Times by Sheila Benson

Yaaba's power sneaks up on you. At first it seems as spare as the airy African Savannah where it unfolds. It's only with a little distance from its muted beauty that the plan of the film becomes clear.

75

Chicago Tribune by Dave Kehr

Ouedraogo films all this with great formality and stateliness of pace.

50

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

The locations are attractive, the performances are natural, and the details about local folkways are interesting, but the plot is a bit dull in spots.