The White Masai
| The White Masai | |
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The German theatrical poster.
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| Directed by | Hermine Huntgeburth |
| Produced by | Günter Rohrbach |
| Written by | Johannes W. Betz Hermine Huntgeburth (adaptation) Günter Rohrbach (adaptation) Ruth Toma (narrator's script) Corinne Hofmann (novel) |
| Based on | The White Masai (novel) |
| Starring |
Nina Hoss Jacky Ido |
| Music by | Niki Reiser |
| Cinematography | Martin Langer |
| Edited by | Eva Schnare |
| Distributed by | Constantin Film |
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Release date
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Running time
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131 minutes |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | English German Swahili Maa |
The White Masai (German: Die weiße Massai), directed by Hermine Huntgeburth, is a 2005 film about a woman named Carola (Nina Hoss) falling in love in Kenya with Maasai Lemalian (Jacky Ido). The film is based on an autobiographical novel of the same name by the German born writer Corinne Hofmann. In the film version, names have been changed from those in the novel.
Carola (Hoss), a German woman living in Switzerland, is on holiday with her boyfriend in Kenya. She falls in love with Maasai warrior Lemalian (Ido), who is visiting dressed in the clothing of his area. At the airport on the way home she decides to stay. It turns out that Lemalian has gone to his home village in the Samburu District. Carola travels to the area, and stays at the house of another European woman. Lemalian hears about her stay and comes to meet her. Eventually they start living together.
She travels to Switzerland to sell her shop there, promising Lemalian to come back to him. She does, and they marry and have a daughter. Carola buys a car and starts a shop. They lose money on the shop because Lemalian gives too much credit to friends and neighbors, and because they have to pay bribes to the mini-chief. Lemalian argues that this is no problem because she has more money in Switzerland.
The mini-chief demands that Carola hires his teenage nephew as a shop assistant. She has to accept this although she does not need him and he does not work hard. After some time, when he is just drinking beer and not working, she fires him. Later he returns and attacks her. A local judge rules that she has to pay two goats for firing him, but the boy's family has to pay her five goats to compensate for the attack.
Carola is frustrated by the female circumcision being practiced in the village. She wants to stop it, but it is a long tradition that is not easily changed.
When Carola helps a pregnant woman in labour with a breech birth, Lemalian refuses to assist because the woman is supposedly bewitched.
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Wikipedia