Movie Review: “Al-Sit” Challenges Tradition

The film follows the story of a life of teenage girl living with social rules and obligations, and traditions and customs. Can she choose for herself? 

Short films have always been challenging in their storytelling due to the brevity of the runtime. However, Al-Sit (2020), an award-wining Sudanese short film by Russian-Sudanese writer, researcher and filmmaker Suzannah Mirghani, makes the best out of the brief screen time and gives us the masterpiece that is the great short film, Al-Sit. 

The film takes us to a small Sudanese cotton-farming village where a young Nafisa is gathering cotton with her friends while singing beautiful traditional Sudanese songs. She has eyes for a boy of a similar age, Babiker. However, unaware, Nafisa’s family has other plans for her. Her parents are rather impressed with a young entrepreneur, Nadir, who lives abroad and has big plans for the village. They have arranged for her to marry him. However, the final say is not up to Nafisa, Nadir or their parents, but is in the hands of Al-Sit, who is the village matriarch and prime decision maker.

This beautiful film shows us a glimpse of life in rural Sudan and gives us insight into how the young girl does not have much choice in how her life goes. It captures a culture where decisions are taken for you by the elderly. Nafisa’s dilemma is quite obvious as she watches her life unfold in front of her – between a mother who is overjoyed with the prospect of a rich husband, a matriarch who wants the little girl to follow her footsteps and Nafisa’s own feelings for the young boy and yearn to make her own decisions. 

With only 22 minutes of screen time, we get an entertaining, authentic and captivating performance from all of the cast members, every character is well portrayed, beautiful cinematography and fantastic choice of music.

Al-Sit won at least 23 international awards and in 2021 was the arab short film with the highest awards, including Best Director at the Beirut International Women Film Festival 2021, Jury prize at Busan International Film Festival 2021, Best Short Film and Chairman’s award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival 2021. In addition, the film received the award for Excellence in Arab Filmmaking at the European Independent Film Festival 2021, the Canal+/Cine+ Award at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival 2021, and the Grand Pix at the Tampere Film Festival in 2021. All of these awards qualified the movie to received six Academy Award qualifying prizes in 2021. 

I can only hope for more brilliant performances from the entire cast and would definitely re-watch the film time and time again. 

Al-Sit is available to watch on Netflix MENA.  

Tuqa A Hafeez is a 29-year-old architect based in Sudan, currently exploring the world of writing. She is a passionate thinker, creative person, and a film, music and book enthusiast with a huge appetite for knowledge.

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