Sambizanga Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
If you’re looking for a snapshot of the people’s struggle for Angolan independence, you’ve come to the right place. Sambizanga follows a woman as she tries to track down her husband with her newborn baby. Meanwhile, in the background, the Angolan liberation movement slowly builds momentum. The director, Sarah Maldoror, worked with Gillo Pontecurvo on The Battle of Algiers before directing Sambizanga so it’s no surprise there are plenty of links between the two. If you need another reason to watch, it’s also one of the first feature films directed by a woman of colour.
From: Angola, Africa
Watch: YouTube (not good quality but can't find anywhere else)
Next: The Battle of Algiers, Flame, Lucia
The Breakdown
Sambizanga starts at a construction site. It’s here where we first meet Domingos doing hard labour, breaking up rocks with a sledgehammer and carrying them from one place to another. It’s not an easy job, but the uplifting background music indicates that his life isn’t too bad.
At the end of the shift, Domingos goes home to his wife (Maria) and his newborn baby. Their life all appears just fine. They’ve got each other, they’ve got a baby boy, and they’ve got enough to get by. However, their humble lives are suddenly disrupted when a jeep full of policemen arrive at their door, drag Domingos out the house, and take him away.
From this point on, the film follows Maria as she carries her baby around the country searching for Domingos. No matter how far she has to go, or how she is treated, she doesn’t stop looking for him. Whilst she is searching, the cogs in the Angolan Liberation movement start moving to try and find out who Domingos is and why he was taken. They are the community that Maria (and the Angolan people) needs.
Fighting racism or classism?
The director makes a point that the Liberation struggle is not a case of blacks vs. whites, but poor vs. rich. This is most obvious in a scene half way through the film in which one of the Liberation Movement’s leaders calls to get rid of class, however it’s also shown from the start of the film.
It’s clear in the first interaction Domingos has with his black co-worker, in which he greets a white person walking by them and tells his co-worker that “white’s are our friends”. His words immediately downplay the hate against white colonists.
The director also highlights the blacks that help incarcerate Domingos, such as the black policemen that take him away, and the black officer that interrogates him. The director includes them to show that it is not just white colonists that hold Angola back, but the black Angolans that help the white colonists enforce their power. They carry out their jobs for the white colonists because they want a better salary to live a better life. They aren’t doing their jobs because their bosses are white, but because they want to be richer. Therefore the problem is that the people are betraying the country to try and escape poverty – a problem solved by eradicating class through socialism.
What to Watch Next
Watch The Battle of Algiers next if you’re looking for something with the same themes as Sambizanga. They both depict the growth of a liberation movement and the mounting tension between the colonists and the people. It also happens that the director of Sambizanga worked on Battle of Algiers too!
For more African revolutionary films, you could also check out Flame, which follows two women who join the Zimbabwean independence movement. Or for revolutionary films from elsewhere, I’d strongly recommend watching Lucia or I Am Cuba from socialist Cuba, or Battleship Potemkin from the USSR. All three are revolutionary in their topic matter and in their film-making style.
Otherwise, check out Atlantics from Mati Diop. It’s another African film featuring a young woman looking for her lost partner, but instead of featuring a strong political message, Atlantics is much more open to interpretation.
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