Cotton Queen

Sudan's colonial history haunts a small cotton-producing village in this critically acclaimed coming-of-age drama.

Nafisa grows up hearing stories from her grandmother and village matriarch, Al-Sit, about heroic struggles with British colonialists in a small cotton-producing Sudanese village. When a foreign businessman arrives, she finds herself at the centre of a power struggle over the community's future. The man brings a business plan and genetically engineered cotton, and Nafisa decides to save the cotton fields from a new form of colonialism.

The film premiered in the Critics Week in Venice, and is the first film from Sudan written and directed by a woman.