A cocaine-smuggling cartel, some black-magic mercenaries and a horde of vengeful spirits combine with gleeful abandon in Saloum, a genre mash-up from Senegal that is equal parts spaghetti Western, hard-boiled crime thriller and go-for-broke horror movie. With some African folklore and a dash of colonial politics thrown into the mix.
After the rapturous response from audiences and critics at Austin’s Fantastic Fest and in Toronto, where the film premiered in a Midnight Madness slot, Saloum is well on its way to becoming a cult favorite. Or maybe even something rarer: a cross-over genre film from Africa. Elle Driver is handling world sales.
“We wanted to make the kind of film we’ve never seen from Africa, to tackle genres we’re not supposed to see in Africa, that we never talk about in Africa cinema,” says director Jean Luc Herbulot, who followed his hyperactive 2014 debut Dealer — about a Parisian pusher trying to make one last big score — with a film that is world’s apart: both in geography and ambition.
Set in Senegal, by way Guinea-Bissau, Saloum follows three swaggering mercenaries, local folk heroes known as the Hyenas: Chaka (Yann Gael), Rafa (Roger Sallah) and Minuit (Mentor Ba). When their getaway plane, loaded with a suitcase of gold bullion and a Mexican drug lord Felix (Renaud Farah) gets shot down over the Saloum Delta, a vast, sparely-populated nature reserve in western Senegal, the Hyenas decided to lay low, hiding out at an idyllic tourist camp until they can repair, refuel and escape. Talks around the communal dinner table touch on politics in post-colonial Africa and the sayings of Thomas Sankara, the first president of Burkina Faso and a noted anti-imperialist.
But Chaka has a hidden agenda. A traumatized former child soldier, he’s out for revenge. One of the camp guests, Awa (Evelyne Ily Juhen), an intense young deaf-mute woman who communicates in sign language, recognizes the Hyenas and threatens to expose them unless she can join their troop. And the camp itself has a dark secret: it is built on unholy ground, home to powerful and vengeful spirits known as the Sira Bana.
That’s almost too much story to pack into an 84-minute movie, but Herbulot holds everything together, slipping smoothly between genres, from gangland caper to revenge thriller to folk horror and back, all while supplying enough visual flair and verbal wit — “Do we look like UNICEF?” snaps Minuit in one of the film’s best lines — to keep audiences on board. He’s helped by a stand-out score of spooky choral songs and thumping afro drum beats from French multi-instrumentalist Reksider.
“I love Westerns, I love horror,” says Herbulot. “I also grew up with these African stories of monsters and black magic. I’ve always wanted to try and mix these influences, to do a movie that might tackle some serious issues but is all about having fun. I’m not saying anything new when I point out that there’s a great business in showing misery in Africa. … But I grew up in Congo. I survived a Civil War there. And I can tell you: growing up in Africa is fucking fun.”
“We don’t want to deny the problems, the social and political issues in Africa, but there’s more here than sickness and poverty,” says Saloum producer and co-writer Pamela Diop. The film is the first project from Lacme Studios, a Dakar-based company Diop and Herbulot launched in 2019 to “bring something new, something free and crazy to African cinema,” says Diop.
Lacme’s next feature, Zero, is a high-concept thriller: two Americans wake up in Dakar with bombs strapped to their chests and 10 hours to find out what’s happened before they explode. “It will be crazy, maybe even crazier than Saloum,” promises Herbulot, who directed and is currently in post on the project. He is also working on two prequels to Saloum, including an “origin story” for the Hyenas.
“Saloum was our leap of faith: that with a modest budget and a good idea we could prove that Africa doesn’t have to be just about miserable realism in movies,” he says. “Maybe this will inspire future filmmakers to follow us and tell stories on this continent that are more fun, more entertaining.”
Source: HollyWood
