In this 2002 feature English documentarian Kim Longinotto—known for her incisive, sympathetic films on women resisting repressive customs in Iran and Japan—looks at women in Kenya who refuse to be circumcised. In one segment a nurse opposed to the tradition argues with a newlywed man who plans to penetrate his young bride’s sewn-up vagina; he leaves the clinic undeterred, implying his pride will outweigh his bride’s pain. In another segment she visits girls who’ve found refuge in a Christian boarding school and gotten an injunction to stop their parents from having their “filthy” clitorises sliced off. Wrenching scenes of these crude operations made me wonder what was more appalling, the screams of terrorized children or the pride of the mothers who pin them to the floor. 92 min.
