Samba Traoré

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Made in the wake of his Cannes Grand Prix winner Tilaï, the great Burkinabé writer-director Idrissa Ouédraogo’s fifth feature begins with a botched service-station robbery and follows its lone survivor home, where a suitcase of stolen cash begins to look, at least from a distance, like providence. Back in his village, Samba (Bakary Sangaré) buys cattle, opens a bar with a childhood friend, marries the woman he once loved (Mariam Kaba) and becomes a father figure to her young son, even as rumor and conscience gradually expose the shaky terms of his new life. Ouédraogo, who in the 1990s began drawing his humanist realism in closer contact to genre stylism, deploys the film’s thriller shape to examine what guilt does to a man once his material life begins to flourish, and how a community comes to share, profit from, and finally question the lie on which that prosperity rests. Winner of the Silver Bear at the 1993 Berlinale and newly restored in 4K, Samba Traoré remains one of the decisive works of African cinema. A Film Movement release.

Restored in 4K, the 35mm original image and sound negative were digitized in high quality, digitally restored, and a new color grading was applied by Cinegrell. All the original elements are preserved at the Cinémathèque Suisse on behalf of Waka Films.