Kirikou and the Men and Women

The third film of an animated series set in West Africa. The narrative opens with a frame. The village elder gathers the children around him and says he will tell the unknown stories of Kirikou. There are five separate tales. Each is independent and each centres on someone else from the village. In the first there is a woman with no roof. Rain is coming and nobody helps her. In one a huge blue monster arrives. Kirikou does not fight it; he does something else. Another tells of a woman who makes pots. Another has a road to the city and music heard there. Kirikou stays small each time. He is a hand's span tall and finds all his solutions not through strength but through knowing how to look. What the narrative is interested in is not adventure but community: its question is what the people of a village owe each other and what someone excluded will do. The sorceress Karaba is here too but is not a threat. The narrative places her somewhere more complicated. The visual language is consistent across this series. Flat colours, sharp silhouettes, an arrangement close to African painting traditions, and composition that gives depth through colour. The music is inside the narrative. Percussion and local instruments carry the transitions between scenes. The director's known manner continues; the frame of a storyteller and listening children is a structure he used in his earlier films as well. Sabine Pakora, Romann Berrux and Awa Sène Sarr are among the voices. Michel Ocelot wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes hand-drawn animation and the shape of a folk tale, and families with children. Who it is not for: anyone expecting one whole story; the film is five separate short parts with no tension between them.