Purchase: www.der.org/films/return-to-belaye.html The film focuses on filmmaker, Amy Flannery and her husband, Papis Goudiaby, as they leave their home in the United States and journey back to Papis' birthplace (Belaye, Senegal) where he must undergo the tribe's traditional initiation rite. Dressed in colorful ceremonial costumes and under the influence of hallucinogenic roots, the villagers fire cannons, wave knives in the air, and dance a themselves into a frenzy. It's a tough ordeal for the initiates and agonizing for Flannery, who wavers between feelings of alienation and angst watching her husband go through the ritual. More than an anthropological study of an ancient initiation rite, this film is an honest and intimate cross-cultural love story. a film by Amy Flannery distributed by Documentary Educational Resources

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