The Attachment

Guinaw-Rails, the neighborhood in the Senegalese capital Dakar where Mamadou Khouma Gueye grew up, is marked by poverty and complex challenges, but it also has a strong sense of community. This district, where his mother still lives and is deeply rooted, is being bulldozed to make way for the Dakar Regional Express Train. Residents are displaced arbitrarily, without consultation, without the compensation they were promised.

In painfully sharp contrast to the government’s slick promotional films, Gueye captures his mother packing her belongings and making her way through half-demolished streets, with the ominous sound of sledgehammers in the background. Once a political activist, she now has health problems and is growing tired of the struggle. And yet her strength, wisdom and humor still shine through.

Gueye documents the neighborhood as it once was and what it has now become, but through his lens he also makes a strong connection with his mother. The result is a socially engaged film about injustice and power imbalance that is also a personal chronicle, with Gueye’s mother as its central heroine.