Binta y la gran idea
2004 · 33m · España
Directed by Javier Fesser
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Binta and her father, a humble fisherman worried about the progress of humanity, who is determined to carry out a great idea he has had.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
On paper this reads like a sentimental coming-of-age fable—exactly the kind of thing that makes me roll my eyes—but Fesser's refusal to sentimentalize the father's half-baked 'great idea' is genuinely perverse; the film trusts the audience to sit with failure and bewilderment instead of resolving it into uplift.
Fesser positions this within a specific lineage of lyrical African cinema and neorealist family portraiture, the 33 minutes structured with the restraint of a Tati or Kiarostami—every shot of the fisherman and his daughter measured against the weight of expectation and the dignity of ordinary life.
The entire film hinges on Fesser's decision to keep the 'great idea' deliberately vague and half-formed, never clarifying or explaining it; that refusal—letting ambiguity carry the emotional work instead of plot—is what transforms a modest Senegalese village story into something that lands like a stone in still water.