IMDb
6.5 /10
142 votes


Drama · 1968 · 18 min
Filmmaker-griot coming from the theater, it was with a camera, while the war in Vietnam occupied everyone's minds, that Sarah Maldoror gave visibility to the African wars of decolonization: Angola, Guinea Bissau, French Guinea, Cape Verde... Her short film Monangambée addresses the torture by the Portuguese army of a sympathizer of the Angolan resistance. At the end of editing, Sarah Maldoror approached the members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago during a Parisian concert and offered to add sound to her film. The next day they watched the film, were convinced and recorded their first soundtrack for free as evidence of African-American solidarity. Shot in Algiers, Monangambée is a film about torture and, more broadly, about the incomprehension between the colonized and the colonizers. It is based on a novel by the Angolan writer Luandino Vieira, then imprisoned by the Portuguese colonial power.
Sign in and build your archive. The best notes get written right after the credits roll.
Sign in → top right
IMDb
6.5 /10
142 votes
Rotten Tomatoes
The tomato isn't ripe
Metacritic took the day off
TMDB
6.8 /10
8 votes
Letterboxd
7.0 /10
—
Weighted average
6.7/10
Available in United States (data from JustWatch via TMDB · click → opens in provider)