In his acceptance speech for Parasite, director Bong Joon Ho made a statement about how “once you overcome that 1-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you’ll be introduced to so many more amazing films.” I have been blessed this year to watch many wonderful non-English language films. As the year comes to an end, Saloum from writer/director Jean Luc Herbulot will be one of the highlights. Saloum‘s a film that, despite laying out much of its hand in the first ten minutes about what to expect, still managed to contain several surprises.
The film has a distinct visual style that it establishes early. It lays the groundwork for the film’s later mysticism from the very beginning with the sun and moon both present over the water. While this is something that does naturally occur, the positioning of one on top of the other is what gives it an air of something unnatural. You pair it with the image of a child, a boy entering the water, holding a gun in one hand and chains in the other and it sets an arresting scene for the film to follow, to live up to, but a film that centers unstoppable mercenaries as leads met the challenge head-on.
Herbulot is not a passive filmmaker and he comes in after that scene guns blazing, though mostly just knockout powder and delft fighting is shown. The sequence dynamically introduces the Bangui’s Hyenas, our “guns for hire,” as they extract a Mexican drug trafficker (along with his gold) from Guinea-Bissau during a coup d’état that put drug pushers in the crosshairs. The VO establishes the Bangui’s Hyenas as legends, their skills renowned, the stuff of myths. We see them in action as they grab their man and get to their plane: an orchestrated concert of skill and daring. Only once in the air, they discover their plane is leaking. Unable to reach their extraction point, they are forced to set down early at great risk. It’s decided they will set down in Senegal, a place that Chaka (played by Yann Gael) has a history. Much of that history he’s hiding from his partners.
But he’s not the only one. In Saloum and the communal village led by Omar (played by Bruno Henry), there are plenty of secrets to be revealed. As truths come out, you see where the ties are that truly bind.
The film centres itself around a saying about revenge being like a river, and it would be easy to take to the film and filmmaker at the word especially since the end of the film reflects the saying. However, I think the film is trying to confront something more nuanced. The trauma that Chaka never dealt with, a trauma that stems from his experiences in Saloum as a child, and the reason he seeks revenge. It’s shown from their arrival in Senegal when Chaka needs to be knocked out to travel on the water to arrive in Omar’s village.
Saloum has played TIFF as part of midnight madness (a perfect midnight madness film) and is now at the newly launched Red Sea Film Festival. If this film is reflective of the type of content the Red Sea Film Festival filled their first lineup with, I expect we’ll be hearing more about them in the years to come.