Redefining Authority

Sonita, just 10 years old, sits quietly in court president Beatrice Ntuba’s chambers. Asked to describe her charge against a neighbor, she stands, only a few short feet from him, and speaks. Her story is grim: he tied her up with red cloth and raped her, leaving her body “all covered in blood.” Then, she says, “He threw me out the door.” As Ntuba listens, the accused sits just behind Sonita, shifting in his chair and sighing, shaking his head. She instructs him to be still, warning him that she will not allow him to influence the girl’s testimony.

This scene typifies Sisters in Law, Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi’s 2005 documentary about the changing political and legal landscape in Kumba Town, Cameroon. As Sonita responds to state prosecutor Vera Ngassa’s questions, the man behind her is both her assailant and an emblem of a system of wherein men possess women and adults own children, where authority and violence are coterminous. And yet the movie is less accusatory than insistent and sometimes provocative, advocating for the collective healing made possible through the recognition of women’s rights. When six-year-old Manka escapes her “auntie,” and then appears before the court, Ntuba repeatedly asks her to show the scars on her back (caused by beatings with a hanger), in front of her abuser, who breaks down and apologizes for her “mistake.” “Don’t you ‘sister’ me,” the judge snaps, horrified by the girl’s evident pain and her abusive aunt’s professed ignorance.

Sisters in Law—which premieres as part of ITVS’ Global Voices on 9 October—considers how evidence is used to counter longstanding customs and social expectations. It also follows the case of a Muslim woman seeking a divorce from the man who has been beating her since their marriage when she was 14 years old. Declaring her newfound belief in her own rights as a consequence of working with the Women Lawyers Association, she tells her story before a panel of local male judges, who threaten to send her back to the man who might “split her in two.” Still, she holds her ground, and eventually finds herself in a classroom full of girls, one of the first women in Cameroon to secure a divorce for reasons of spousal abuse.

While the film observes these events, appearing not to interact with its subjects, it also offers a deeply affecting political argument, concerning the significance of individual responsibility—as adults and also peers are admirable as they advocate for or protect children, even in the face of outrageous cruelty and selfishness—and in this, the film shows as well a commitment to the social function of documentary. Working with Longinotto and Ayisi, the subjects of Sisters in Law are asserting and redefining the legal and political dimensions of their lives.

Sonita’s accused rapist, for instance, sure of his own testimony, is visibly dismayed when Ngassa notes its absurdity (that a child “who doesn’t even have boobies,” as she puts it, would approach him for sexual intercourse and then cut herself when he rejected her). The man is visibly disappointed back in the courtroom, when he is convicted and sentenced, bowing his head and claiming that his life as an orphan has left him without proper resources and deserving of the court’s mercy. But the camera has caught him out as much as the judge has: he has no evidence to support his stories, and indeed, his version of events is undermined by what’s now visible and—in various ways—documented.

Early in the film, a father appears before Ngassa to claim his young daughter, after he has kidnapped her from her mother, he suggests the mother has abandoned the child, but the mother protests, and Ngassa points to documents supporting the woman’s version of events. Ngassa cuts to the chase: “Even though she’s a woman, she’s still entitled to her child.” The father goes another route, saying that his “rights” are based on tradition, as he’s married the mother “country fashion.” He smiles and nods as the prosecutor interprets, “The Mbunge people’s way?” Ngassa is not amused, as the mother explains that she refused the man even though her father wanted the dowry.

All the while, the little girl sits on her mother’s hip, her eyes wide and her mother’s steady: she means to have her say, and believes that she can. In one shot the man’s store-bought jacket sleeve and gold watch form a kind of frame, filling the foreground as mother and child form the more compelling image behind him. The composition tells the story of change here as well as the individuals narrating. A cut back to Ngassa at her desk reveals that she’s seen what she needs to see, and moreover, that her authority is visible in this room.

As the women and girls in Sisters in Law enlist the camera—as defense, proof, or emotional support—they reveal an understanding, however intuitive or self-serving, however rudimentary or sophisticated, of how images work. The representations of men in law, in court proceedings, and in traditions, are challenged by the intimate, emotional, and sometimes perverse possibilities of films.