AllMovie

This documentary by a woman filmmaker takes the viewer inside one of the harem of an African chieftan living along the banks of the River Niger. This is a vanishing lifestyle, and the documentary offers insight into it in many ways. The harem women are slowly venturing beyond the confines of their enclosure, and one even has a job. Their children have their own entrepeneurial enterprises at the local market, selling trinkets. The chief's wives deal with him largely through the offices of his steward, who comes in for more than his share of abuse and ridicule from the many women, who talk very freely to the filmmaker about their lives.