The Sacred Woods: A coming-of-age ritual in Ivory Coast
From Al Jazeera World.
This award-winning documentary from Ivory Coast follows a group of young men who undergo an ancient coming-of-age ceremony in a remote West African forest.
Their spiritual tutor is struggling to preserve the tradition of the Generation Festival at a time when young local men are increasingly indifferent to these ancestral rituals.
Thanks to his efforts, ancient custom prevails and many young men in their early twenties take part in a gruelling three-week endurance test of physical and mental prowess.
Konaté Massioudou is a scrapyard trader in Ivory Coast, whose deafness neither defines nor deters him. Konaté Massioudou repairs, rebuilds and sells some of the thousands of household items from Europe that get discarded and dumped every day in Anoumabo, a massive electronic waste scrapyard in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
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