In 1 9 6 1, during the Portuguese colonialism, Domingos Xavier, a driver of a bulldozer at an construction site in Dondo, Angola, is kidnapped by the secret police from his home and brought to a police station for interrogation. He is accused of joining the underground Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). His wife Maria takes her baby with her and walks all the way to Luanda to search for Domingos in one of the jails. Domingos is tortured and beaten, but he refuses to name any MPLA members. He dies in prison. Maria is devastated by the news of his death. MPLA members hear about him and decide to attack the jail, thereby starting the Angolan War of Independence.
The first African feature film directed by a woman, Sarah Maldoror's "Sambizanga" is also one of the first films depicting the Angolan War of Independence from the Portuguese colonial rule, or better said, the event that triggered it, the enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture at a prison in Luanda. Since it depicts this rarely thematized historical event, "Sambizanga" has noble, ambitious merits, but its execution is weaker, suffering from too much empty walk and overstretched storyline. The two brief moments which show the protagonist Domingos being mistreated and abused in jail during the interrogation, but he refuses to give away any names of the independence movement (just as he is about to take a sip from a beer mug, one interrogator slaps him from behind), are probably the strongest bits, lifting up the interest of the viewers and engaging, but this is disrupted and diluted by the rather boring, bland storyline of his wife Maria walking on and on, on the road, from one police station to another, which is much weaker. Maldoror needed more cinematic-stylistic inspiration, for a more versatile viewing experience, since the movie is too formal to truly ignite on a higher level. Still, she painted a picture of the country at that time. Some episodes are authentic precisely because they seem as if they came from a documentary (women washing their clothes on a river; workers mining rocks with hammers).
Grade:++
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