The little girl who sold the sun

“The little girl who sold the sun” draws comparison between global market competitions among different nations of the world. A crippled girl called Sili represents a Senegalese economy while the street boys represent the competition. Sili manages to get into newspaper selling on the street where aggression is only the way of survival and those who are weak do not seem to have any chance. A dead kitten on the side of the road symbolizes the fierce competitive environment.

The first scene in the movie holds out a clear image of life in Senegal. A woman is wrongly accused on the street and arrested, while everyone else watches the show. Membety tried to create a picture of the injustice in society. Another scene in which Sili is trying to buy things and a police officer just accuses her of getting the money in an illegal way.

A different approach to sales pitch of Sili attracts a clientele which then turns into a turf war later and everyone trying a cutthroat approach in order to regain competitive advantage. But her clientele actually go out of their way to buy her papers and she becomes financially independent. The director symbolized the independence of Senegal from the use of French Franc as suggested by The Sun as the same as Sili’s financial independence. Sili represented a new Senegal, moving towards improvement in their economy leaving behind the chaos, anarchy, injustice, corruption which essentially crippled the country’s economy.