Sambizanga: Sarah Maldoror's 1972 Film on Angolan Resistance

A podcast episode from RFI's series 'Cinéastes d'Afrique' revisits Sarah Maldoror's 1972 feature film 'Sambizanga', the first fiction feature directed by a woman on the African continent. The film follows Maria, a young woman searching for her husband Domingos, a MPLA militant arrested by Portuguese colonial police in 1961 Angola. The episode features archival radio, film excerpts, and interviews with Maldoror's daughters Annouchka de Andrade and Henda Ducados, plus narration by Makeda Monnet. Maldoror, a French filmmaker, moved to Paris in the 1950s, met Mario de Andrade (MPLA co-founder) at the 1956 Congress of Black Writers and Artists, studied cinema in Moscow alongside Sembène Ousmane, and shot her first short 'Monangambée' in Algiers with FLN support. 'Sambizanga', adapted from José Luandino Vieira's novel and co-written with de Andrade, was shot in Congo-Brazzaville and co-produced by France and Angola. After long legal inaccessibility, a recent restoration enabled rediscovery. The film is now available on LaCinetek, DVD/Blu-ray from Carlotta, and in Criterion's World Cinema Project box set. A retrospective at Centre Pompidou in 2025 accompanies the 'Paris noir' exhibition.