Set in a small village community in contemporary Africa, Finye centers on a love affair between an army commander’s daughter and the grandson of a tribal chief. A spirited, sympathetic portrait of a society in transition, the film defines the director’s central philosophical premise: that the ethnographic approach or seemingly modern view of African culture is no more valid that the traditional metaphysical view. Myth and symbolism maintain an important role in Cissé’s films, where the frontier between realism and metaphor constantly shift. Here, he employs these multiple perspectives to present an intriguing study of a culture that is both exotic and unexpectedly familiar.