Women With Open Eyes

A film about African women is a rarity, even more, one made by an African woman. In Femmes Aux Yeux Ouverts, award-winning Togolese filmmaker, Anne-Laure Folly presents portraits of contemporary African women from four West African nations: Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Benin. The film shows how African women are speaking out and organizing around five key issues: marital rights, reproductive health, female genital mutilation, women’s role in the economy and political rights.

Femmes Aux Yeux Ouverts introduces us to many unforgettable African women. we meet a woman who has taken refuge in a convent from a forced marriage. We join a community health worker demonstrating condom use in a marketplace. An activist describes why it is more effective to attack female “circumcision” as a health issue rather than as a women’s rights issue. Women entrepreneurs, who control trade in major cities explain how they have formed their own mutual aid societies. A Malian woman, who lost her daughter in the 1991 pro-democracy demonstrations, describes how women continue to play a key role in the Malian revolution.