Our take
There’s much to despair at in Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's drama set in Chad, where abortion is illegal, female genital mutilation isn't, and single mothers are ostracised. Amina's (Achouackh Abakar) 15-year-old daughter Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio) has just been expelled from school because she’s pregnant. Like Amina, Maria has been abandoned by the child’s father — but, having witnessed first-hand the stigma that comes with being an unmarried mother, she refuses to let history continue repeating itself, and declares she wants an abortion.
But underground abortions are expensive, and the duo are barely scraping by as it is, in spite of Amina’s backbreaking manual work. Their situation is dire — and there are more disturbing revelations to be had — but, despite the bleakness of Lingui’s plot on paper, the film isn’t miserabilist. As Amina searches desperately for a safe abortion provider, she takes us with her into a furtive underground network of solidarity, one that offers the mother and daughter all the compassion and aid that the government and their imam should be providing. This is a film in which acts of kindness are quietly delivered on the understanding that that’s what we owe each other, and one where sisterhood is alive — making this, paradoxically, a simultaneously enraging and heartening watch.
Synopsis
On the outskirts of the capital of Chad, determined single mother Amina works tirelessly to provide for herself and her 15-year old daughter Maria. When Amina discovers Maria is pregnant and does not want a child, the two women begin to seek out an abortion, condemned by both religion and law. In the process, mother and daughter forge a connection stronger than any they’ve ever known.
Storyline
When she discovers her teenage daughter’s unwanted pregnancy, single mother Amina does everything she can to procure a safe termination for her, despite abortion being illegal in Chad.
TLDR
Don’t be like the Oscars and overlook Lingui.
What stands out
Abakar’s performance. Amina initially seems like someone who has been cowed into meek submissiveness by the alienation and cruelty dealt her by her judgemental family and wider community, but when she discovers Maria’s pregnancy, Abakar shows us her character’s hidden depths. Though we sense how difficult it must be to have the little social standing that she's managed to build for herself threatened by such a revelation, she has not become as callous as others: love for her daughter transcends everything else. Lingui’s broader portrait of solidarity is deeply poignant, but at the heart of it is Amina’s example, which Abakar makes enormously moving with a performance that burns — quietly yet ferociously — with love.