Sambizanga

Sarah Maldoror's 1972 film was made while Angola's independence struggle was still going on, adapted from a short novel by José Luandino Vieira. Domingos, a tractor driver, is taken from his house at night by the Portuguese secret police, and his wife Maria sets out to find him with their baby on her back. She goes from one police station to the next, one prison to another, and nobody tells her anything. Rather than centring scenes of torture, the film describes that search, the waiting rooms and the unanswered questions, showing the everyday and female side of resistance. Maldoror became one of the first women to direct a feature on the African continent and had to shoot in Congo. It won the grand prize at Carthage. The telling is slow and measured, and the ending is built as a beginning rather than a funeral. Who it's for: viewers curious about African cinema and anticolonial narrative. Who it's not for: anyone expecting action; the film moves at the pace of a search.