The Woman with the Knife

Timité Bassori is one of the unsung heroes of African film and one of the fathers of Ivorian cinema – a singular voice whose work remains largely unavailable globally. The Woman with the Knife is his best known film – a complex account of a young, unnamed Ivorian intellectual returning home after a lengthy spell in Europe. Failing to reconcile his new-found modernist views with his African traditions, the man becomes haunted by the specter of a knife-brandishing woman threatening to shatter any potential relationships with other women. Providing an incessive commentary on the evolving sexual politics of the era and the wide chasm between the Western form of modernity and self-enveloping African traditionalism, Bassori’s daring coup is one of the pioneering works of black African cinema. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)