Black Jesus

The film rests on the life of the African politician Patrice Lumumba. The name is changed; in the film he is called Lalubi. Lalubi is a leader determined to save his people, and his method is passive resistance. Against him stands a dictatorship propped up by European colonial powers. Lalubi is seized, imprisoned and tortured. A thief is held in the same cell, and through his contact with Lalubi he starts to see his own life differently. The film does not turn the leader’s end into a story of deliverance. The account uses images drawn from the Gospels openly. Woody Strode and Franco Citti appear in Valerio Zurlini’s eighty nine minute Italian film, completed in 1968.