Under Pressure

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Summary: Amaka is ridiculed by a group of girls at her school because she doesn’t have a mobile phone yet. How will she react when the smooth-talking, forty-something Nico offers his “help” in the matter?

Sample topics for discussion:

1) In what ways – and by whom -- are girls put under pressure to have sex? What about boys?

2) Why do some people give in to that pressure? Why and how do others manage to resist?

 

Co-directed by young talents Olga Kiswendsida Ouédraogo, Burkina Faso, and Hamet Fall Diagne, Senegal (both shown at left).

Based on an original idea by Oby Akaneme, aged 23, Nigeria (shown here at right).

Length: 5 minutes 58 seconds

• Production date: 2004
• Shot in: Burkina Faso
• Currently available in: American Sign Language, Dioula, English, Fon, French, Igbo, Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, Lingala, Mina, Mooré, Portuguese, Pulaar, Twi, Wolof, and Yoruba.

Please click here to view and download photos from the shoot of the film Under Pressure.

During a 2009 evaluative study of the Scenarios from Africa films among secondary-school students in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Under Pressure received particularly favorably comments from participants:

 

“Under Pressure is the best film, because it advises us to live within our means and not to want to be like everybody else; we don’t all have the same stars.”

 

“Every day, school kids are victims of this kind of thing, and the film gives good advice to those kids who put money ahead of everything else.”

 

“The best film is Under Pressure, because it helps people understand the role of materialism when it comes to sexuality, as well as materialistic influences between friends and the consequences of that, like those that made the girl cry in the film.”

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