Tall as the Baobab Tree

A young woman in Senegal tries to save her eleven-year-old sister from a forced marriage: in a Senegalese village, sisters Coumba and Debo are the first in their family ever to be allowed to go to school. But when their older brother injures himself in a fall, the medical bills are too high for their father to pay. As a result, Debo is to leave school to be sold into an arranged marriage, in keeping with tradition. Torn between her parents and her dream of an independent future, which Coumba hopes to achieve with the help of her education, she devises a plan to save her sister from the fate of forced marriage. But it turns into a race against time. ‘In his first feature film, director Jeremy Teicher gives the young generation of Africa a powerful voice and impressively depicts the continent's conflict between tradition and modernity. Teicher, born in New York, studied film, theatre and English at Dartmouth College and drew inspiration for his debut from true events.’ (Source: Osnabrück Film Festival)