The Day I Will Never Forget

Also profiled are an inspiring group of sixteen runaway girls who are seeking a court injunction to stop their parents from forcing them to go through with the practice.

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The Day I Will Never Forget (2002)
FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW; An Unblinking Eye On a Searing Topic

By ELVIS MITCHELL
Published: March 29, 2003


Kim Longinotto's powerful documentary, ''The Day I Will Never Forget'' makes its points with a low-key directness. Ms. Longinotto knows that the subject is so discomforting that it's best for her to let it unfold without hysteria.

That subject is female circumcision -- also known as genital cutting -- and the social conditioning that continues to make it part of life in Kenya after it has been outlawed. The slightest, but still detectable, note of upset creeps into the pleasant voice of the nurse Fardhosa, who runs a clinic in Kenya, when she has to deal with the consequences.

''That girl screamed and screamed, and up till today I still hear it,'' she says, speaking of a case with a victim who suffered painful complications. And such complications are routine: girls subjected to the procedure are stitched up afterward and suffer difficulties with urination and menstruation and sometimes sex.

Amina, a young woman who was recently married, has to cope with the complications of the stitches, too. She visits Fardhosa to have her stitches removed, and the nurse does her best to prepare Amina for the pain that she will have to endure. Amina finds she can't go through with the stitch removal while conscious, and that's when the director ingeniously introduces the real villain of the film. It's the driving force in Kenya that keeps circumcisions alive and well: shame.

Shame is what keeps Amina's husband from allowing her to have the procedure with anesthesia. ''It will bring shame on my family,'' he tells Fardhosa. ''Day,'' which plays today and tomorrow as part of the New Directors/New Films series, does not dress this moment up with a wandering camera or emphatic melodramatic pans from one face to another or other overwrought techniques. The mildly defiant look on the man's face tells the story.

''According to our religion, it's the husband who makes the decisions, not the wife,'' he asserts blandly. When Fardhosa says that circumcision is not part of Islam but a ritual handed down by the pharaohs, he shrugs and allows that he was not around when Amina's parents had the operation performed.

Ms. Longinotto understands her subject well enough to know that information makes the case with unsettling forcefulness.

Early in the film an elderly circumciser explains how the act is performed, and weeps when she realizes that her daughters will probably undergo it. ''Day'' also shows Ngonya, a tribal elder who details the rationale behind the operation.

''I'm not propagating anything,'' he says, and then propagates the belief that boys and girls have organs of both sexes at birth -- foreskins are thought to be feminine and clitorises masculine.

It's shame, too, that leads to the climax of ''The Day I Will Never Forget,'' which is perhaps the most self-explanatory title ever. A girl, with the aid of her sister, refuses to undergo the operation and takes her father to court. Her father, shaking his head, is dejected, humiliated by the shame of having to open his family life to the public.

By using each case to show how deeply ingrained, and still accepted, the practice of genital cutting still is, Ms. Longinotto shows there's a long way for Kenya to go. While difficult to watch, ''Day'' is worth sitting through for the look on the face of the little girl -- and her older sister, who supported her -- when she learns the court's decision.

THE DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET

Written (in Somali, Swahili, Masaai and Kalenjin, with English subtitles), produced and directed by Kim Longinotto; director of photography, Ms. Longinotto; edited by Andrew Willsmore; music by Charlie Winston; released by Women Make Movies in association with HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films. Running time: 92 minutes. This film is not rated. Shown today at 2 and 6 p.m. and tomorrow at 4 and 7 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, 165 West 65th Street, Manhattan, as part of the 32nd New Directors/New Films series of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the department of film and media of the Museum of Modern Art.

WITH: Fardhosa Ali Mohammed and Ndaisi Kwinga.

- source: NYTimes.com