Aïcha Macky talks about her film "l'Arbre sans fruit" (The Fruitless Tree)

Aïcha Macky begins and ends her film Fruitless Tree in dialogue with her mother: "Dearest Mama, while giving life, you lost yours.” She laments her own circumstance, “whereas I’m dying a slow death by not being able to give life." Nonetheless, she tells her mother that her steps are guided by her spirit.

She talks with Aïssa Abdoulaye Alfary* about her reasons for making the film (translation from French by Beti Ellerson):
 
After four years of marriage, we still did not have a child. This situation is considered  "out of the ordinary" in my country, Niger, where marital status means that the couple has a child as soon as possible. Not a month or even a week went by without me being involved in a baptism. The first question I was asked was 'when are you going to also have a child?' That was at the beginning of my married life. As time passed, it increasingly became a psychological pressure. I didn't know what to say to people. Am I obliged to talk about my personal life, to justify myself at each instance? Do I need to say to people that the child does not just make itself? There were so many questions that harbored within me.

In this context, it is difficult to escape from the judgment of others and the pressure that is put on women. But the woman is not the only one who is affected, the couple can also be imperiled for not meeting the requirements of marital life.

My delay in motherhood has created a personal disorder that questions both my place in my own family—the after affects related to my mother's death, but also my own place in society. This raises questions about what happens when a woman is in a situation of failure regarding this "duty" required by her gender, what then is her relationship with the women's community, her feelings about herself.

My mother died following childbirth when I was only five years old and I have been dying slowly by not giving this life. I filmed this notebook of my life, and I made a parallelism between my story and that of my mother. It is a film that traces the path of my relationship with motherhood, and takes as a starting point this mother, unknown, of whom I only keep a blurred photo. Through my personal experience, I seek to probe the fate of women in relationship to childbirth - and gathering the feelings of women who are presumed infertile. The "fruitless tree" documents this reality that surrounds us though we do not perceive it.

*Aïssa Abdoulaye Alfary (onep) 07 décembre 2018  Source : http://www.lesahel.org