“Why is it always those who have light skin that win,” asks a young Senegalese man tasked with handing out flyers for a local beauty pageant.
The setting is Dakar, where the newly-released film Timpi Tampa tells the story of a young man, Khalilou, whose mother is diagnosed with cancer, potentially from using skin-lightening products contaminated with mercury. He disguises himself as a woman named Leila to join a beauty pageant dominated by light‐skin standards, with the intent to challenge that system.
