Once seen, never forgotten: as cinema and politics, Sambizanga is unimpeachable.
Sambizanga
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Angola, France · 1973
1h 42m
Director Sarah Maldoror
Starring Domingos de Oliveira, Elisa Andrade, Jean M'Vondo, Dino Abelino
Genre Drama
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After Angolan revolutionaries attack a prison in an effort to liberate the political prisoners, a member of the liberation movement is arrested by the colonial Portuguese police and tortured for information. Meanwhile, his wife is searching for him desperately, traveling from prison to prison to find him.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The movie doesn't put forth heroes or villains, and it offers a class analysis rather than a racial one. The emphasis is on the oppression of the poor by the rich—on the system that perpetuates a minority. Throughout, the plight of individuals helps to nail the political point. Meanwhile, let's hope that this impressive new director makes many sequels to her first feature film.
Out of the Past by Raquel Stecher
A poignant story, Sambizanga offers a straightforward story of familial strife and incarceration as a platform to further explore the nuances of inequality,
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