by Clarke Fountain
synopsis
Modernity and tradition work at cross purposes, in this film from the tiny West African nation of Burkina Faso, when a peddler is found dead in a village alley. The police go through all the procedures they have so laboriously learned for solving the crime and punishing the guilty party; the villagers have their own methods for accomplishing the same thing, methods which (in this case) appear to be infinitely more successful. Meanwhile, the village's chief has sent his nephew on an initiation trek for reasons which are not so obvious.
