The Cotton Queen’s tale

Daniel Nelson

Cotton Queen shows Sudan in a new light — or at least shows the country at a moment of change and with a touch of magical realism.

The magical element is injected by Sudanese-Russian writer and researcher Suzannah Mirghani in her first full-length feature film.

It’s a film marked by both the artistic freedom, the poetry and the optimism of Sudan’s 2019-20 Arab Spring and by the subsequent clampdown and chaos, which forced filming to be switched to cotton-growing neighbour, Egypt. Some of the actors and crew remain refugees.

At the heart of the film are Al-Sit, a former Cotton Queen (a custom taken to Sudan by the British from Lancashire cotton mills) and now the respected and feared village matriarch, and Nafisa, her 15-year-old granddaughter. Al-Sit’s reputation is built on a colonial-era tale in which she is reputed to have killed a British army officer - perhaps when she was 15, perhaps in the dusty, shuttered, haunted “English house” from which the village boys run in fear. When the village cotton crop is failing, Al-Sit maintains the value of her fields by refusing to use pesticides and insisting on the sexual “purity” of the girls who work for her: “Virgin cotton picked by virgin girls.”

For Nafisa, it is the future that matters, but to make it happen she has to wrestle with long-set attitudes and traditions, particularly those impinging on women and girls. She wants more than her society expects of her: “On my holidays all I do is pick cotton cotton cotton,” she complains. 

The collision between old and new also affects the cotton fields, in the shape of smart, young, educated, besuited Bilal, who steps from his expensive car bearing promises of genetically modified, non-replicating cotton seeds. 

His apparent wealth and standing excite the gaggle of girls who gather to witness his arrival (“Hey, Nafisa, look at his watch!”).  Nafisa’s family see the stranger as a catch (though he is also a modern equivalent of colonial exploiters, enthusiastically destroying village autonomy) but Nafisa herself has an eye on local onion seller Babiker.

Female circumcision gets a look in, along with gender discrimination, colonial exploitation, love (“Are you Cupid?” “Are you stupid? Cupid is banned in Sudan.”), family, friendship, choice, and life. But the film is never didactic and does not take sides. Instead, Mirghani spins a beautifully told tale, with lively dialogue and wonderful colours. A story to savour.