The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun

Extraordinary twelve-year-old actor, Lissa Baléra, portrays Sili Laam, a girl from a shantytown who, despite a disability that requires her to use crutches, travels to the city and becomes an itinerant newspaper vendor. She is so successful that she incurs the resentment—and the violence—of her young male competitors, whom she faces down with courage and resilience.

For many years, newspapers have been sold on the streets of Dakar by boys. They don’t accept Sili. This is their territory. But Sili is successful: on the first day, someone buys all her papers and gives her a big tip. No one believes she earned the money honestly. She is picked up by the police, but eventually they let her go. Sili uses the money she has earned to buy a parasol for her blind grandmother. The rest she gives to lepers. This short film is a hymn to the courage of street children.

Mambety’s richly textured view of urban life fuses fiction and documentary, displaying the rampant poverty and endemic misogyny in the modernising capital. With fable-like lyricism, he contrasts the bitter competition among the poor with exemplary acts of audacious solidarity—and shows the vital public culture that arises spontaneously from the struggles of street people. The movie is a virtual musical, featuring religious chants from a teacher, and songs that stream from a boom box. Sili leads the street dance, blending fantasy and practicality with joyful wonder.