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For generations of Sudanese women, cotton meant money of their own. Grandmothers spun raw fibres into thread and sold it, granting women who might otherwise have no income a\u00a0degree of independence. It was also one of Sudan\u2019s great colonial commodities, grown for wealth that largely travelled elsewhere. In Suzannah Mirghani\u2019s Cotton Queen<\/i>, those fibres come carrying an awful lot of baggage.<\/p>\n
Teenage Nafisa (Mihad Murtada) has rather more immediate concerns. She loves Babiker (Talaat Farid) and would like to marry him. Unfortunately her formidable grandmother Al-Sit (Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud) has already selected Nadir (Hassan Kassala), a\u00a0young Sudanese man raised in Britain. Nadir arrives in the village with another proposal: genetically modified cotton seeds that promise bigger yields and threaten to supplant the crop growing in the surrounding fields.<\/p>\n
It would be easy to make Al-Sit the dusty totem to tradition, but she is far too interesting for that. The village matriarch is adored, obeyed and burdened with a\u00a0past that has swollen into mythology. Her authority also sits in uneasy contrast with the economic independence cotton once afforded women like her. Meanwhile, the supposedly modern alternative comes with its own strings attached \u2013 GM<\/span> cotton was introduced to Sudan in 2012<\/span>; by 2020<\/span> it had overtaken most of one of the country\u2019s staple crops, escaping the control of the matriarchy.<\/p>\n Mirghani fills this tussle with pleasures far removed from policy. The writer-director has been circling this material for years, first exploring Nafisa\u2019s world in her award-winning 2020<\/span> short Al-Sit<\/i>, which became a\u00a0proof of concept for this feature. A\u00a0Sudanese-Russian filmmaker raised in Khartoum and now based in Qatar, she approaches Sudan with the intimacy of home and the perspective of distance. The title reaches back to the Cotton Queen beauty contests, a\u00a0British publicity wheeze exported to colonial Sudan in which pretty young women became the smiling faces of the cotton industry. Mirghani reclaims the crown for a\u00a0Sudanese girl considerably less interested in being decorative.<\/p>\n There is, however, a\u00a0terrible ghost hovering outside the frame. Mirghani intended to shoot in Sudan before war forced production to Egypt, where displaced Sudanese cast and crew rebuilt a\u00a0version of home beside the Nile. Watching as a\u00a0Sudanese woman in 2026<\/span>, the familiarity is devastating. Homes like these have been emptied, communities scattered and lives destroyed. What should be the incidental pleasure of recognising a\u00a0landscape, a\u00a0song or the particular dynamics of a\u00a0Sudanese family can suddenly feel like being winded.<\/p>\n Yet one of Cotton Queen<\/i>\u200b\u2019<\/span>s great gifts is that Sudan is not presented as a\u00a0country waiting to fully commit to tragedy. People flirt, gossip, scheme and become furious with their interfering relatives. Nafisa has the glorious teenage conviction of terminal uniqueness, that nobody in history has ever been as inconvenienced as she. In the mess of living life, she is given the freedom by Mirghani to imagine a\u00a0future when so many Sudanese people are currently fighting to once again\u00a0have.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n