Mama Africa (2002)

CONTINENTAL DRIFTERS ''Mama'''s family

The three stories that make up Mama Africa, a cautionary triptych hosted by Queen Latifah, were all shot by different filmmakers. Yet they are unified by something far more eye-opening than their crude prosaic style would suggest. In each of the three, a young man or woman -- in Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa, respectively -- is faced with a crushing lack of opportunity and, at the same time, a path out of the dead end that hinges on severe moral compromise. A young single mother is inveigled to smuggle diamonds, another is asked to return to her coke-dealing past (she has just served five years in prison for it), and, in the most hard-hitting episode, an impoverished basketball player on the verge of a tryout is invited to join up with a gangster for a chance to get the new athletic shoes he needs to succeed.

The twist is this: Several of the characters do make their deal with the devil -- and the film doesn't disapprove, exactly. It doesn't approve, either. It understands, in a way that speaks forcefully enough about the mechanisms of poverty to transcend the rather simplistic filmmaking.