SEX, OKRA AND SALTED BUTTER

Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

Chad, France, 2008, 80 min.

Regular festival goers are familiar with the films of Chadian film director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, which include Bye-Bye Africa shown at CFAF in 2001, Abouna Our Father in 2004, and Darratt/Dry Season in 2008. With his latest film, Sex, Okra and Salted Butter, Mr. Haroun brings us a delightful satire that through its comedy of errors reveals insights into the African immigrant experience. For Malik, traditional family patriarch and now expatriate living in France, the culture shock proves too much when his attractive, much younger wife Hortense, a nurse, leaves him for one of her patients, a French oyster farmer. In the process of enlisting his eldest son Dani’s help in finding her, he discovers that his son is gay. Meanwhile, Malik’s two younger sons, who have been neglected while he looks for his wife, decide to go in search of a surrogate caretaker. A glimmer of hope is kindled with the arrival of Hortense’s aunt from Côte d’Ivoire, but Malik soon finds that the headstrong relative has her own ideas about tradition. In French with English subtitles.