La Nuit Sacree (1993)

Run Time - 110 min.  |   Countries - France  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Clarke Fountain

Due to there being an excess of girls in her family, the seventh daughter (Amina) is given a boy's name (Ahmed) and is treated that way by everyone including her father. However, when she grows to an age where she tries to shave and grow a mustache, contemplating taking a wife, these palpable impossibilities clue the family into the fact that she isn't, perhaps, entirely sane. On his deathbed, her father (Francois Chattot) attempts to rectify things by renaming her with a girl's name (Zahra) and telling her to go out and live as a woman. Still pretending to be a man, and moving freely in that manner, she travels across Morocco to find a situation in the house of a blind Consul (Miguel Boss) and she runs afoul of his romantically possessive sister. There, the contradictions in her present and past come home to roost in the most tragic possible way.