A group of young women tweak machines and hammer away at a school for auto mechanics in Ouagadougou in this poetic story about life choices, sisterhood and the endeavour to find your own way. In a country with youth unemployment at 52 percent, jobs are a hot issue. The young girls at a mechanics school in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou are right in the middle of a crucial point in life when their dreams, hopes and courage are confronted with opinions, fears and society’s expectations of what a woman should be. Using interesting narrative solutions, Theresa Traore Dahlberg depicts their last school years and at the same time succeeds in showing the country’s violent past and present. This is a feature-film debut and coming-of-age film with much warmth, laughs, heartbreak and depth.
In this hybrid documentary, we glimpse the lives of young women training to become mechanics in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Amidst the quirks of their training, they find solace in their sisterhood. Ouaga Girls proves itself a contemplative film that examines the determination needed to break into a male dominated profession. The rigour demonstrated by the girls establishes this film as an important watch.
Kika Memeh & Ogheneofegor Obuwoma, FOCUS Curators
Presented by
Bintou Konate, Chantale Nissougou, Mouniratou Sedogo, Catherine Nea, Dina Tapsoba, Marthe Ouedraogo
Sweden/Burkina Faso/
France/Qatar
2017
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
David Herdies
Cinematography
Iga Mikler, Sophie Winquist
Editor
Alexandra Strauss, Margareta Lagerqvist
Original Music
Christoffer Roth, Seydou Richard Traore, Jenny Wilson
Theresa Traore Dahlberg
Theresa Traore Dahlberg (born 1983 in Värnamo, Sweden) resides and works in Stockholm. She studied film at the New School in New York and the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 2017, she graduated with a Master of Fine Art from The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Her film, The Ambassador’s Wife (2018), won the Tempo Short Film Award and screened internationally at festivals such as TIFF, Berlin Critics’ Week, Clermont-Ferrand, and Telluride. Her first film, Taxi Sisters (2011), and her first feature-length documentary, Ouaga Girls (2017), continue to be widely shown around the world.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Tree of Life
The Tree of Life follows Jack as he reflects on his 1950s Texas childhood and the death of his younger brother. Deeply spiritual and poetic, Malick’s film moves through grief, memory, time, and space. And there are dinosaurs.
Sometimes, I Imagine Them All at a Party
Fourteen years ago, Daniela Magnani Hüller survived an attempted femicide by a schoolmate. Now a filmmaker, she revisits the events surrounding that fateful incident, creating a moving collage of interviews, personal recollections, and archival material.
Image: © Bildersturm
Queen at Sea
An academic is pitted against her stepfather in a moral crisis over the care of her mother, who lives with dementia. Winner of the Silver Bear Jury Prize and Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance at the 2026 Berlinale.
Image: © Seafaring
The Story of Documentary Film – The 2000s
The Story of Documentary Film – The 2000s enters a decade shaped by 9/11, war, fear, and politics. Through films such as The Cove and Grizzly Man, these chapters trace the documentary medium's encounter with modernity as it begins to unravel.
Image: © Iraq in Fragments, 2006, dir. James Longley, USA, Daylight Factory Typecast-Pictures