WUNRN
Women Make Movies - WMM
Film - FGM - Asylum - Laws - Challenges
FILM SEGMENT - http://www.wmm.com/advscripts/wmmvideo.aspx?pid=44
Movie: MRS. GOUNDO'S DAUGHTER
A
film by Barbara
Attie and Janet
Goldwater
U.S./Mali,
2009, 60 minutes, Color, DVD, Bambara, French, English subtitles
Mrs.
Goundo is fighting to remain in the United States. But it’s not just because of
the ethnic conflict and drought that has plagued her native Mali. Threatened
with deportation, her two-year-old daughter could be forced to undergo female
genital mutilation (FGM), like 85 percent of women and girls in Mali. Using
rarely cited grounds for political asylum, Goundo must convince an immigration
judge that her daughter is in danger.
Sensitive and moving, this important film reveals how women are profoundly
affected by the legal struggles surrounding immigration. As issues of asylum,
international law and human rights collide with FGM and its devastating health
consequences, filmmakers Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater travel between an
FGM ceremony in a Malian village, where dozens of girls are involved, to the West
African expatriate community of Philadelphia, where Mrs. Goundo challenges
beliefs and battles the American legal system for her child’s future.