The thirty-minute film Hawa, written, produced, and directed by the Burkinabe cineaste Arzouma Kompaore, is the story of a Cameroonian husband and wife—Hawa and Kader—who immigrated to the U.S. about ten years ago and are encountering issues with the American lifestyle and culture, in addition to marital problems. In the opening scene the wife (Hawa), wrapped in indigo cloth, blesses herself with incense and prays to a fertility god to give her children. Despite the warm friendships that the couple enjoys—Hawa’s group of female African friends at the hair salon, Kader’s Ethiopian mechanic friend—as well as the comforts of their apartment, beautifully decorated in African décor, the exterior cold of the American culture and climate seem to be destroying the couple. Kader, who works as a taxi driver, struggles with diabetes and a heart ailment, which he did not have back in Cameroon, and immigration seems also to be preventing a new generation from being born.

In this context, the film confronts a number of taboo issues, including male infertility. Ultimately, Hawa brands Kader as “an infertile man, incapable of tenderness.” The film also addresses the subject of female sexuality. While Hawa and Kader have grown emotionally isolated, Hawa seeks enjoyment by watching a comedy program on television while Kader, reacting with scorn, chooses not to join her. Hawa further seizes control of her pleasure by fantasizing about her dance instructor and masturbating. Through a flashback at the end of the film, we see Hawa as she climaxes, juxtaposed with Kader, angry and alone in his taxi, struggling to breathe with heart pain.

Hawa’s married couple makes us think of the protagonists in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973) and how they could have ended up years later, long after their carefree motorcycle ride beneath the sun with the wind in their hair. In a video interview on the film’s website (http://www.afreefilm.com/bloghawa), Kompaore says that the film was inspired by his acquaintance with numerous immigrant couples in America who divorced as a result of the pressures and challenges of immigrant life. “Within the multiple stories I have heard or witnessed myself,” he says, “what is sad to me is that couples come here looking for a better life but end up breaking apart. Instead of a strengthened marriage we see strengthened individualism. As the ones rise from silence, the others fall in silence. In most cases, women seem to be the ones craving to break free and relax the stranglehold around their neck. . . .”

Hawa also can be viewed in the context of other works in the West African film canon, including Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl (1966) and Tassere Ouedraogo’s Djanta (2007), which share themes of isolation, racism, tradition, and female identity. Like Queen Latiffa’s Mama Africa (a 2002 collection of short films by African women directors), Hawa also challenges socioeconomic stereotypes about immigrants and about Africans, showing us protagonists who were professionals in Cameroon but are under- or unemployed in America. This film also could be presented in conjunction with the 2016 novel Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, which features a Cameroonian immigrant couple that decides to return to Cameroon to preserve their marriage. At the end of the film we see Kader leaving for the airport dressed in traditional clothing on his way back to Cameroon. Viewers are left wondering if Hawa will follow her husband or remain on her own in America. And, if she remains in America, how will her relationship with her family and husband change? Prosper Kompaore, in an entry on the film’s website titled “A Semiologic Analysis of the Movie Hawa,” says that “the infertility drama becomes a metaphor for a failed integration of African immigrants to the American society. An immigration without quality employment and a better lifestyle is, at a second level, infertility. The infertile couple is the symbol of a failed immigration.”

According to the film’s website, Arzouma Kaompaore has presented Hawa at numerous high schools and colleges in the U.S. It certainly is a film that could be included successfully in the African studies curriculum.