GREAT AFRICAN FILMS - VOL 1 : Haramuya & Faraw! Mother of the Dunes - Two films are included in the package, making for an entertaining and edifying double feature experience: Drissa Toure's Haramuya (1995) is a sprawling dramatic comedy about several generations of a traditional Muslim family scraping up against various temptations (crime, movies, drugs, music) of modernity in the city of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, and Abbdoulaye Ascofare's Faraw: Mother of the Dunes (1997), from Mali is about a mother of three who struggles to support her family while saving her daughter from becoming the concubine-maid of a French colonialist.

FARAW! MOTHER OF THE DUNES
Director: Abbdoulaye Ascofaré
From: Mali
Year: 1997 Minutes: 90
Language: Songhoï with English subtitles
Genre: drama

Zamiatou is the mother of two quarrelsome boys and a depressed teenage girl. She is also the wife of a man arrested for political reasons who returns from prison mentally and physically destroyed. She struggles hard to survive in a poor and desolate area. She is ready to face anything to keep the family alive except prostituting her beautiful daughter. Her determination will take her far from her family…

HARAMUYA
Director: Drissa Toure
From: Burkina Faso and France
Year: 1995 Minutes: 87
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: comedy

Ouagadougou, its buildings and shantytowns... Wealth in a modern town and poverty in the suburbs. Through Fousseini -- a Muslim firmly attached to his faith and traditions - and his family HARAMUYA draws a picture of Ouagadougou in the traps of modernism and traditionalism. Fousseini tries to take care of his family according to the old precepts and the code of honor inherited from his ancestors. One of his sons is a cinema projectionist and supports all the family against the will of his wife. The other son idles around all day long in Ouagadougou, looking for a girlfriend.