This review was originally published on September 17, 2021.

The programmers at the Toronto International Film Festival read the room and smartly selected a well-made family drama that also deals with an issue that is very much in the conversation. However, to refer to Lingui, the Sacred Bonds as a story mainly about abortion would be to shortchange it. First of all, it’s arguably the best film so far by director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Abouna from 2002, 2010’s A Screaming Man), and his first where women take center stage.  

Secondly, what is paramount here is the relationship between Amina (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane), a single mother in her 30s, and her pregnant 15-year-old daughter, Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio). They live on the outskirts of Chad’s capital city, N’Djamena, where Amina hocks her handcrafted wire stoves, arduously made from scratch, by the side of the road. Beyond this household, the movie’s purview enlarges to include the neighborhood, Maria’s school, and the larger community, namely of women who takes risks in helping each other out. According to the director’s online intro, the title refers to the Chadian concept of living together and helping each other in solidarity.  

Almost from the beginning, Amina knows something is up by her daughter’s distant, taciturn behavior. Suspicious, Amina follows her to school. Though Maria walks in the direction of the school, she takes a detour before entering the campus. Taking matters in their own hands, Amina confronts the school principal, who informs her that Maria is pregnant and has been expelled because, “it is bad for our image.”  

In a confrontation that night, Amina slaps her daughter and demands that the father of Maria’s baby take responsibility. Maria refuses to reveal his identity and adamantly declares she will have an abortion, dismissing her mother’s objections that, as a Muslim, she can’t consider that. In Chad, the procedure is only legal in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest or a pregnancy that endangers the mental, physical health, or the life of the mother or the fetus. Barely a teenager, Maria still sleeps with a giant teddy bear.

After crashing a rich classmate’s birthday party, where she gets drunk sipping on champagne, Maria learns there is gossip going around the school that she is pregnant—the word is out. She abruptly leaves the party, stays out all night wandering the streets, and heads toward a river in the morning. If anything can be pinpointed to Amina’s shifting stance, it’s her daughter’s suicide attempt.

Because she has never been married and was expelled from school when she had Maria, Amina is an outsider and estranged from family members, who have never met her daughter. Her only friend appears to be the storekeeper across the street, who early on proposes to Amina, telling her that she needs someone to protect her and also reminding her that everyone else scorns her because she’s a single mother, a fate Maria wants to avoid. The daughter sums it up bluntly to her mother, saying that since everyone considers Amina a loose woman, no one respects her.  

What follows is a slow building change of heart or, as some might consider, a rebellion on Amina’s part. Scene by scene, she weighs her daughter’s options. She also begins smoking, stops attending the nearby mosque, and begins to care less what people think. The director balances stark options against scenery that is at times picturesque, yet without stealing the focus away from his characters. Each day, the mother and daughter face a new hurdle, such as finding a way to pay for one doctor’s exorbitant fee. Once the decision is tacitly made, the two don’t rehash the issue. Instead, the script centers on a teenager who will seek an abortion regardless of the legal or cultural constraints. As a result, this film has more in common with the White working-class teens of Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always, though with a different cultural mindset and obstacles, than the harrowing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days set in 1980s Romania.

Haroun has become a mainstay at the Cannes Film Festival in the last decade, with his works frequently joining the competition lineup. For moviegoers searching for a thoughtful and suspenseful work outside of the North American/Western European bubble, Lingui, The Sacred Bonds is a must-see. Meanwhile, it has been acquired by the streaming service MUBI, and will play in festivals throughout the fall, such as at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival in mid-October.