Cotton Queen is the debut film of Russian-Sudanese writer-director Suzannah Mirghani and very clearly made for an international audience. The establishing shots of laughing teenager cotton workers watching Tiktoks make sure, even if we know nothing about Sudan, we know it’s firmly in the now. And while it is Sudanese through and through it is also a co-production with six other nations (Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia). This means that Cotton Queen has been designed around topics of alleged international interest instead of ones more organically grown. And while the movie is never boring, it’s unfortunately impossible not to feel the heavy-handedness involved in its every creative decision.
Nafisa (Mihad Murtada) is a cheerful village girl in her late teens. The village is ruled by her grandmother also named Nafisa but known to all as Al-Sit (Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud), a calmly fearsome old woman who owns the best cotton fields in the area. She earned her authority from an act of violent rebellion against the British colonizers in her early teens, and she’s maintained it through the quality of her harvests. Her cotton is the last to be harvested by hand, and Nafisa and the other young workers don’t know this is because Al-Sit believes virgin cotton should only be handled by virgin hands. There’s a lot the local girls don’t know, because they have been kept in deliberate ignorance. Is it really bad luck for women to ride in boats, or is that just a way to prevent girls from travelling? Though as some of Nafisa’s friends point out, even if they did get away to another place there would be another Al-Sit there.
Outside of the village is an abandoned mansion known to all as the “English house,” which a expat businessman buys for his son Nadir (Hassan Kassala) so he can settle down. Nadir arrives to a flurry of interest and soon is offering farmers a guarantee of better crops from his GM seeds, although his business model involves forcing the farmers to buy new seeds from him every year. The farmers consider it, mostly because they are fed up of doing business with Al-Sit, but they aren’t particularly impressed. Nadir also lets it be known he is looking for a wife, which sets the village a-flutter. To Nafisa’s friends he is a catch and a half, a wealthy husband to buy them pretty clothes and take them on trips to London. Who cares if a blonde features on his Instagram grid? But while Nadir sets his eye on Nafisa, Nafisa only has eyes for a young laborer named Babiker (Talaat Fareed). She writes Babiker poetry about her feelings, for pity’s sake. But a starry-eyed teenager’s feelings aren’t important when family prosperity is on the line. It becomes clear Nafisa’s mother Aisha (Haram Bisheer) is determined to spite Al-Sit by marrying Nafisa off to Nadir, whether or not that’s what Nafisa wants.
Ms. Murtada’s charm and good nature do an enormous amount of the heavy lifting, as does Nafisa’s calm acceptance of how her family and her village treat her. She might not always be very happy, but she’s never felt the need to rebel against her raising, although that’s changing fast. Ms. Mohamed Mahmoud has a much tougher part, as the spiteful old woman whose intentions are not as good as she wants everyone to think they are, and she makes sure a double agenda is apparent in every scene. Frida Marzouk’s cinematography is crisp and clean, and while it centers Nafisa it also ensures the wider village context is very apparent.
But the subplots are largely a bingo call of clichés about smalltown life, and even the dream sequences don’t ever achieve even a kind of splendor. The squabbles here could have been filmed in many developing countries, and while discussing it like that diminishes the issues being addressed – women’s rights, GM crops, capitalism spoiling everything – there’s no sense that this story could only have been told in Sudan. Worst of all, the build-up to the finale is botched, relying too heavily both on flashbacks and on people acting out of character. It should have been satisfying but instead it feels forced. But Ms. Mirghani clearly has what it takes to be an excellent director, and it’s clear her next movie will be even better. To that purpose Cotton Queen is a charming calling card.
Cotton Queen recently played at the Venice Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Venice site for the title.
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