The Girl from Carthage

Aïn el-Ghezal (1924), directed by Albert Samama Chikly from a screenplay by his daughter Haydée, who also stars, is among the first narrative features made in Africa. A caïd's daughter is forced to marry a brutal farmer; she loves Taleb, the muezzin and schoolteacher; they flee into the desert; horsemen kill him and stab her as she covers his body. Haydée wrote it, she said, to show how badly women were treated when they were just sold off. Only a fragment survives, recently reconstructed from the family scenario. Haydée Chikly is counted as the first woman to write a film in Africa.