Educational Media Reviews Online

Addressing the spirit of struggle and survival as the first steps in the process of decolonization, Mortu Nega follows the fictional character Dimingua (Bia Gomes), a woman who left her scythe for a gun during the war for Guinea-Bissau.

The film begins in the tenth year of the Revolution and during the closing months of the war against the Portuguese. Dimingua and others snake through grasslands, jungle and immobilizing mud, to carry munitions while hiding from helicopters intent on bombing them. Dimingua's husband Sako goes off to an anti-colonial ambush. At base camp the camera roams to reveal the uncertainty of every moment while a radio announces the assassination of Amilcal Cabral the revolution's leader. Soon after, the war is over and Dimingua returns to her village without her husband.

She reintegrates and Sako joins her after demobilization. The struggle is far from over for those survivors whom death has refused: drought is a persistent threat while revolutionary comrades turn into black market profiteers or into images of former colonial bureaucrats. A new balance needs to be achieved and the film culminates with a lively festival for the living and the dead in an attempt to unite the disparate post-colonial ethnic groups of Guinea-Bissau and create a new society.

Flora Gomes' film puts a woman's face on the survivors of the revolutionary struggle: we see her struggle as a guerrilla, as a mother having lost her children, as the wife of an ailing husband, and finally as the spirit of unity and dignity. Bia Gomes effortlessly portrays the quiet determination that the role requires. This sense of quiet determination is extended to the rest of the actors as well as to the flow of the narrative.

Recommended for the following interest areas: African History, Politics, and Government, Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies.