The Wedding Ring (2015)
- General info
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- Synopsis:
Tiyaa is a student, member of a prestigious aristocratic family. She is back home to sultanate of Damagaran, in Niger Republic, for the Winter holidays. As planned, she is expecting the young man she met in the university she is studying, in France, to make a formal proposal of marriage. He too comes from a prestigious family, not far from Damagaran and her parents cannot reject such an eligible fiancé. Tiyaa is overwhelmed... While expecting him, she has time to inform her friends of this secret Parisian love. Life is pleasant and peaceful but time passes and the handsome suitor is slow to come. Tiyaa has the opportunity to discover in her surroundings other women whose love stories, marriage, desertion or divorce tell of the relationship between men and women in the Sahelian society. - Actors:
- Aïchatou Lamine Fofana, Sandor Funtek, Mariam Kaba, Aïchatou Moussa, Ali Nuhu, Magaajyia Silberfeld
- Directors:
- Rahmatou Keïta
- Producers:
- Buuli'Zaano, Maryam Keïta
- Writers:
- Rahmatou Keïta
- Aka:
- Zin'naariyâ! / The Golden Ring
- Genres:
- Drama, Romance
- Countries:
- Niger
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Reviews (1) of The Wedding Ring
No Skin Required - The Wedding Ring review by griggs
There's a lovely film buried in Zin'naariyâ! (aka The Wedding Ring), and about a third of the time you can see it.
Magaajyia Silberfeld — director Rahmatou Keïta's daughter — plays Tiyaa, a young aristocrat back in Niger after finishing her studies in Paris, waiting for a fiancé who's yet to arrive. Silberfeld is stupendous, carrying scenes the script hasn't quite finished writing — I'd have followed her anywhere.
What Keïta's really doing is bottling a way of life before it disappears: courtship rituals, sly flirtation, the odd raised eyebrow that says more than the dialogue does. There's a sensuality to it that's all fabric, gesture and eye contact — no skin required. The colour helps too: rich, deliberate, clearly earning its keep.
The trouble is tone. This is the first Sahelian film I've watched, so I can't tell if the softness I'm reacting to is a flaw or just an older storytelling rhythm doing exactly what it's meant to. Either way, it keeps drifting into Sunday-afternoon-telly territory — soft lighting, gentle strings, everyone talking in slightly too-tidy sentences — and moments that should sting instead just sort of... simmer down.
A warm, joyous love letter to a fading world — pity it's scared to raise its voice.