Mozambican film stuns at JFF
Train of Salt and Sugar won the best film award at the Joburg Film Festival
It was no usual journey. During the 1980s, Mozambicans, brought to the brink of desperation by the post-independence civil war that ravaged the country from 1977 to 1992, would embark on a nightmarish 700km train ride from the coastline to the inland border with Malawi, escorted by military guards bearing anti-aircraft machine guns against hostile Renamo forces intent on derailing their voyage.
Civilians risked their lives voluntarily to trade salt for sugar to provide for their families in a time of shortage.
In many instances, especially for women passengers, the evil aboard the train was just as fearful as what lay in their path.
This story of risking life and limb as a way to survive is chronicled in the stunning new film The Train of Salt and Sugar by Licínio Azevedo, which saw its African premiere at the inaugural Joburg Film Festival last weekend, and begins its run at the Bioscope in downtown Johannesburg on November 11.
Based on a novel written by the director, it is a profound and moving “African Western” that brings into focus the value of retrieving the microscopic elements of history on a continent still trying to redefine its place in the grand historiography of the world.
The cinema of Africa is often burdened with the imperative to engage primarily with large-scale narratives of its past. But history is the sum of its parts, and this mature film engages with the incredible detail of a bigger picture, humanising the past and giving it life and relatability.
Following its world premiere at the prestigious Locarno festival in Switzerland, the film has been received warmly by audiences, and the overwhelmingly positive anecdotal response indicates that the film will stand as one of the most notable to emerge from the continent this year.
Mozambique has an illustrious cinematic history, producing some of the continent’s most challenging and progressive films in the 1970s and 1980s. But the fall of the Iron Curtain affected the industry’s sources of revenue, and film production in the country has, for the large part, dried up. Feature-length fiction films have become a rare occurrence.
This makes The Train of Salt and Sugar even more remarkable, in that it soars above the mediocrity of compromise that often plagues filmmaking in such a resource-starved environment, setting a new high-water mark for contemporary Mozambican film.
The period art direction is impressive and seamless — quite an achievement given the technical difficulties of reanimating an antiquated locomotive, which becomes the film’s silent protagonist.
The cinematography is visually rich and thoughtful, lingering on the Mozambican landscape, amplifying the beautiful but terrifying frontier into which the train must venture.
The complexity of the metaphorical language sees the deep pragmatism of warfare collide with animistic beliefs.
The shining star of the film is surely 21-year-old Melanie de Vales Rafael, whose mature performance in this landmark production is sure to set her on the path to an exceptional career.
She plays the character of Rosa, a young nurse, who comes to stand as an emblem for the vulnerability, tenderness and strength of the role women play in times of war. Starring in her third film, the actress got her break in the industry when she was cast alongside Danny Glover in the drama The Children’s Republic when she was only 14.
She has a degree in foreign affairs and diplomacy but chose to ignore her mother’s wishes for her to follow in her footsteps as an academic in favour of telling the “amazing stories” she believes are an untapped resource in her home country, serving as a different kind of ambassador.
As a young Mozambican, excavating the past through personal story is a way for her to understand the events that shaped the world into which she was born, ascribing to them the kind of importance they deserve, and which too often are overlooked.
This is one of the continent’s more amazing stories and the film’s astute execution does justice to its many real-life protagonists.
De Vales Rafael believes she is lucky to have been a part of the production: “I got to experience time travel. People think time travel isn’t possible, but I know it is.”
The greatest success of this accomplished film is that every viewer will be just as lucky as she was.