In rural Sudan, a teenager becomes caught up in a power struggle when a young businessman arrives at her village.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Suzannah Mirghani
Starring: Mihad Murtada, Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud, Talaat Fareed, Haram Bisheer, Mohamed Musa, Hassan Kassala
In western cinema, depictions of cotton picking have almost exclusively been loaded with negative connotations tied to slavery. It is striking then to witness the opening scene of writer/director Suzannah Mirghani's feature debut Cotton Queen (an expansion of her 2020 short Al-Sit), in which a group of teenage girls lark about while picking cotton in a field in Sudan. The girls appear to be having a great time, singing songs, gossiping about boys and watching Tik Tok tutorials. There is no whip-wielding white man overseeing their labour, but as the narrative progresses we come to realise that these girls are not in control of their destinies.
The focus is on teenager Nafisa (Mihad Murtada), whose grandmother Al-Sit (Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud) exerts a matriarchal power over her village on the banks of the Nile. Al-Sit is revered by the young folk for her tales of fighting off the British as a young woman. Her face and hands are marked by scars, and she has numerous stories detailing how she got them at the hands of the evil British General whom she ultimately drove out.
Nafisa's worldview is thrown into chaos by the arrival of the ominously named Nadir (Hassan Kassala), a handsome Sudanese-British businessman whose company has plans to revolutionise the production of cotton in the area. In an ironic move, Nadir plans to move into the colonial home that once housed the aforementioned general. While helping to clean out the house, Nafisa discovers an old newspaper whose story suggests that her grandmother's relationship with the British may have been very different to the legend she has constructed for herself. Perhaps understanding that sometimes a lie can serve a good cause, Nafisa keeps this information to herself. But it changes the way she looks at her grandmother, and causes her to question her place in the world.
Right now a lot of young people around the world find themselves torn between wishing to reject the restrictions of the past while harbouring fears regarding the direction in which the world is moving. This tug-of-war is represented explicitly in Cotton Queen, as Nafisa begins to rebel against her grandmother's conservative ways while also having a cynical view of Nadir's grand plans for her village. She is in love with the humble Babiker (Talaat Fareed), but her grandmother plans to marry her off to Babiker's father. Nafisa's parents on the other hand wish to get her hitched to Nadir, though it is unlikely that the westerner would go along with such an arrangement.
Cotton Queen is a slow burn story of rebellion, with Nafisa ultimately refusing to be treated like a pawn in a power play. This Sudanese production criticises the more toxic aspects of the country's traditions in a way a liberal western film wouldn't dare to touch, while also highlighting the precarious exploitation of the global south by a new form of colonisers who arrive with a smile rather than a musket. The film challenges any naive romantic ideas we might have about life in a post-colonial landscape. The idea of Al-Sit clinging onto her traditional way of manufacturing cotton might seem appealing until we learn the awful truth of how she controls her young workers ("Virgin cotton picked by virgin girls"). It is certainly a process that has no place in the 21st century, but what does the 21st century have to offer as an alternative? Nadir's plans for synthetic cotton are precarious to say the least, and could easily destroy the village should they go wrong.
Murtada and Mahmoud are both reprising their roles from the earlier short, and their screen dynamic is so lived-in that we really feel like we're watching two women with a familial history. Mahmoud is fantastic, a century of history sketched in the lines and scars of Al-Sit's face, even if much of it is a history of her own making. When we learn the terrible truth of how Al-Sit really got her scars it is a devastating twist that makes us fully understand the extreme actions of Nafisa in the film's closing minutes as she simultaneously strikes out against the lies of the past and the perilous promises of the future.
Cotton Queen is in UK cinemas from October 2nd.
