Sarraounia

Director: Med Hondo

1986 / 122min / DCP

The real-life figure of Queen Sarraounia, a turn-of-the-last-century leader of the Anza people in Lougou, Niger who, in 1899, led a tactically brilliant military resistance against French colonialist powers, is the subject of Hondo’s scrupulously researched historical drama, based on Abdoulaye Mamani’s book of the same title, which focuses in turn on Aï Keïta’s young warrior queen and her French foes, their leadership filled with puffed-up would-be conquistadors. “A rare species of film in the history of African cinema. Although numerous projects existed that sought to celebrate African resistance to European colonial conquest, African cinema’s dependence on the political economy of its former colonizers has for the most part made this aspiration nearly impossible.” —Aboubakar Sanogo

Introduction by Amy Sall, author of The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and Power on Saturday, September 21st