In this meditative and elegiac portrait, Senegalese filmmakers Khady and Mariama Sylla record the tales of their grandmother, a griot (storyteller) who is one of the last repositories of their culture’s oral tradition.

In societies where written archival records are scant, the word becomes capital — passed down orally from teller to teller, it transcends the extinction of death. At once elegiac and explorative, A Single Word explores what is at stake for contemporary society with the loss of the word, synonymous with memory — a question all the more pressing and painful given that Khady Sylla passed away on October 8, 2013, while working on editing the film with her sister Mariama and Rodolphe Respaud.