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The Ouédraogo family gets by in a working-class neighborhood of Ouagadougou on the proceeds from the oven-baked pork stand run by Gabi, the father, and his wife.
Luc, the younger son, has given up looking for work and spins out the long days sulking in his room. Marc, the eldest, is finishing his studies in Europe; his beautiful fiancée Maria has stayed home with family in her village to wait for him.
When Marc returns, he marries Maria, gets a job and is able to support the whole family. But just after their first child has been born, he is thrown in jail because of some arbitrary judgment. The Ouédraogo family is forced to go back to eking out a miserable existence by selling baked pork, but the government suddenly introduces a nationwide ban on unauthorized slaughter of animals and the unofficial trade in meat. The family is plunged into utter poverty.
Maria waits, bringing up her child in her new family. Tirelessly, her baby on her back, she gets on the family's old moped to go visit her husband in prison. Luc lies on his bed all day bitterly chewing over his unemployment, despite his qualifications. Gabi sits in his shed with his old radio glued to his ear, going over the same things in his mind, how he lost his civil servant's job and ended up in the suburbs with his family. Father and son argue more and more, the parent criticizing his offspring for being lazy, useless, and for his dirty habit of wearing his brother's clothes since he was jailed.
Their stomachs empty more often than not, the family spend their days in apathy, tension and resentment, intensified by the dry and dusty Harmattan wind.
On one of these long, idle days, Luc and his sister-in-law Maria become lovers. Love can sometimes make you spread your wings and Luc, tired of his own powerlessness, gets back into the business of petty trafficking. He needs money fast, to feel alive at last! But he ends up spending more than his allotted share and soon the bosses want their money back. To get him out of trouble, Maria becomes a prostitute. She also hopes to feed the family. Luc, for his part, is already thinking only of getting out of the country and taking her away from her child.
Servicing clients in squalid places, beset by lies, secrecy and shamming, Maria feels soiled and betrayed. One night, in a crisis of lucidity, she kills Luc, her brother-in-law and lover, and sets off to free her husband Marc from prison.
Can a new day dawn for the Ouédraogo family?
A film by Adama Sallé
France · Color · 90'
Director''s note
Pakitalaki is, first of all, a sound.
The sound of pakitalaki, which is what we call flip flops in the Mossi language.
When we were kids, our father wore pakitalaki that had a special sound which told us when he was coming home. We'd do our best to tidy up and look like well-behaved children. Pakitalaki! pakitalaki! Here he comes!
I grew up in a small village in Burkina Faso, and I was the only one in my family to get a higher education. So if I were to die tomorrow, all the hopes that have been riding on me would die with me, and how would my family survive then? This was the anguished concern that prompted this film.
Directing
Adama Sallé
Production
Athénaïse
2 quater, place du gal de gaulle
93100 Montreuil
www.athenaise.com
Coproduction
Abissia productions
10 bp 13979 ouagadougou 10
Ouagadougou
sekoutra@yahoo.fr
Shooting place
Ouagadougou - Burkina Faso
Shooting start date
06/2013
Expected completion date
11/2013
Production status
Writing / Development
Budget
736'000 Euro
Financing in place
85'000 Euro
Production Company''s Profile (Athénaïse)
We like films that make us richer through sensitive awareness of others, be they near or far. Films that tell us about the evident unity of the world, with its tensions and contradictions. Athénaïse will soon be engaged on co-productions in Canada, Les loups by Sophie Deraspe, and in the Dominican Republic, The Sand Dollars by Laura Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas.
Filmography (Athénaïse)
Une fenêtre ouverte, by Khady Sylla (2005)
Rêves de poussière, by Laurent Salgues (2006)
Notre étrangère, by Sarah Bouyain (2010)
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IT
Francia · Colore · 90'
Regia
Adama Sallé
Produzione
Athénaïse
2 quater, place du gal de gaulle
93100 Montreuil
www.athenaise.com
Coproduzione
Abissia productions
10 bp 13979 ouagadougou 10
Ouagadougou
sekoutra@yahoo.fr
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