"Lingui, the Sacred Bonds," a taut, strikingly beautiful drama from the Chadian writer-director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, begins with a bracing image of a woman at work. Amina (Achouack Abakar Souleymane) makes her living selling small stoves that she makes at home from salvaged materials: She cuts wires out of tires, hammers them out and twists them into spiral-shaped grates. The camera registers the sweat on her brow and the strain in her muscles, but also the satisfaction in her eyes as she surveys her handiwork. She finds fulfillment, even pleasure, in this tough labor. You sense that she also enjoys being left alone with her thoughts, far from the patronizing judgments of those who might deem this a singularly unsuitable job for a woman.
We'll soon meet some of those individuals, most of them men who live in her conservative Muslim community on the outskirts of N'Djamena, Chad. There's the stern neighborhood imam (Saleh Sambo), who scolds Amina for her less-than-perfect mosque attendance, and Brahim (Youssouf Djaoro), a friendly older merchant who insistently asks her to marry him. Amina endures these orders and entreaties with a good-natured forbearance that she's clearly learned by necessity. In truth, she and her 15-year-old daughter, Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio), don't need lectures or marriage proposals. What they need is a wad of cash, a shot of courage and the solidarity of other women who know how to keep the faith as well as a secret.
Maria is pregnant — something Amina finds out only from the girl's school, which has expelled her in response. The air of pious condemnation that suddenly fills the air is both shocking and sadly familiar. Amina herself was just a teenager when she gave birth to Maria; her family disowned her for it and many of her neighbors still treat her like a pariah. Maria has no intention of suffering a similar fate; she wants to have an abortion, a procedure banned by law and their own religious traditions. But after giving in to a moment's despair, Amina springs into action, summoning the unshakable determination we've seen in her from the beginning. Her daughter is all she has left, and her future must be safeguarded at any cost.
