Faat Kine

Faat Kine is a film that touches on many deep themes which reflect and also challenge our perceptions of African life for people in Senegal. Themes such as mixed marriages, opportunities for women, and socio-economic status are all present in this film and create the main struggles for the characters. In most cases these struggles go along with the ideology of the past but in some cases the ideology is challenged.

Engaging Cinema defines dominant ideology as "The view of the world that tends to prevail ina given time an dplace, upholding the existing relations of power and hierarchy". This definition is important to Faat Kine because, well atleast for me personally, this movie broke many of the ideologies I had about life for people in Africa. This can be seen greatly when looking at the character Faat Kine. She is a very strong woman who supports herself and her family without the help of a man in her life. She has a job outside of raising her children which was more progressive than I would have thought for a family living in Africa. I guess I do not know how true this story is in comparison to how people actually live in Senegal but if it is a reflection on their life then I had a completely different view in mind.

On the other hand, something which went along with ideology is the idea of having children out of wedlock. I don't want to sound too critical but it seems as though that happens more often in countries that are not so well off. Along with that is the fact that the father of those children is usually not in the children's life. Now, where Faat Kine is different is that she has a success story with how she overcame the obstacles and supported her family without help from their father's.

The New York Times review written by Elvis Mitchell states, "Because he (the director) is uninterested in melodrama simply for its own sake, he uses Kine's relationship to family and work to investigate the social and political intrigues that are always a part of his purview." This is important to recognize because it is through the interactions of Kine and her family and also to her coworkers that the themes are portrayed. These interactions reveal the deeper ideologies which may still be present or in some cases it reveals the ideas that are challenged by this film.