ABSTRACT
Focusing on the importance of creative storytelling and the appropriation and reinterpretation of popular folktales, legends, and myths, this chapter examines the retelling of North African folktale motives and female trickster figures in Radu Mihăileanu's La Source des Femmes (The Source) and the myth of the sleeping child in Yasmine Kassari's L’Enfant endormi (The Sleeping Child). The female tricksters in these films use female ruse – kayd, a popular motive in oral folktales – and enforce sexual segregation to challenge the patriarchal order and get what they want. By doing so, these women cause fitna, which is social disorder, or chaos. In La Source des Femmes, Berber women go on a “sex strike” to draw attention to problems related to child labor, domestic chores, and fieldwork. L’Enfant endormi, which is set in Morocco, chronicles the lives of women after the departure of the young male village population for Spain. The film, which recounts the story of a mother who puts her unborn baby to sleep, reinterprets the well-known myth of the sleeping child, which is examined in this chapter.
