Ouaga Girls

A group of young women tweak machines and hammer away at a school for auto mechanics in Ouagadougou in this poetic story about life choices, sisterhood and the endeavor to find your own way.

In a country with youth unemployment at 52 percent, jobs are a hot issue. The young girls at a mechanics school in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou are right in the middle of a crucial point in life when their dreams, hopes and courage are confronted with opinions, fears and society’s expectations of what a woman should be. Using interesting narrative solutions, Theresa Traore Dahlberg depicts their last school years and at the same time succeeds at showing the country’s violent past and present. Thisis a feature-film debut and coming-of-age film with much warm, laughs, heartbreak and depth.