Sambizanga (1972)

The Story

Angola 1961. A tractor driver working in a quarry is arrested for his political views and his wife, carrying her baby, walks from village to village and police station to police station, trying to locate her husband.

The first feature film to be made and released in Africa by a woman of African descent, director Sarah Maldoror, who worked on The Battle of Algiers in 1966, co-wrote the script with her compagnon Mario de Andrade, co-founder and first President of the Angolan Liberation Movement against the Portuguese.

Lost for decades in a battle over rights, Sambizanga has finally been restored with help from Maldoror’s children and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation.

“The political is rarely so bluntly personal, and vice versa, but Sambizanga is far from a screed, or a polemic. Instead it’s a beautiful reminder that ideas are the most important things we have…”

• Sarah Manvel

Introduced by Annouchka De Andrade, Amiens Film Festival Director and daughter of the filmmaker Sarah Maldoror

Restored in 2021 by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in association with Éditions René Chateau and the family of Sarah Maldoror

To read Annouchka De Andrade and Helen Goritsas's notes on Sambizanga, click here.

Rating

CTC

Duration

Cast

Domingos de Oliveira. Elisa Andrade, Jean M’Vondo

Director

Sarah Maldoror