Mozambique war-time Western scoops top prize at Carthage

TUNIS: The story of an epic train journey across war-torn Mozambique has been awarded the top prize at Tunisia’s Carthage Film Festival.

“The Train of Salt and Sugar” by Licinio Azevedo, a Brazilian who lives in the African country, received the Tanit d’Or as the festival wrapped up on Saturday. The film has been selected as the Mozambican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, which will be held on March 4, 2018.

Like a Western, the film follows the perilous journey of a train that sets off across rebelheld areas to exchange salt for sugar in 1989 during Mozambique’s civil war.

The Tanit d’Argent went to South Africa’s John Trengove for his first feature “The Wound.”

Veteran Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaidi received the Tanit de Bronze for “Volubilis,” a social critique of extreme liberalism.

Among the documentaries, the jury awarded Palestinian director Raed Andoni’s “Ghost Hunting,” which recreates a notorious Israeli interrogation center and has former prisoners re-enact experiences in a bid to free them of their demons.

This year, the festival featured films from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Senegal, Cameroon, Mozambique, Burkina Faso and South Africa.

A total of 180 films were screened among different categories in the official competition, the official selection out of competition, and parallel selections.

For the official competition, 51 films from 27 countries were involved, including 14 feature-length films, 15 short films and eight short documentaries.

The Carthage Film Festival, the oldest art festival in Africa and the Arab world, was founded in 1966.