Mortu Nega

Flora Gomes’s debut feature is an enduringly influential work of historical ethnofiction, and for good reason: synthesizing historiography with mythology to striking, vibrant effect, Mortu Nega is a structurally fascinating and texturally engrossing meditation on revolution. We begin toward the end of the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence of the mid-1970s, following Diminga (Bia Gomes), a wounded soldier’s devoted wife, as she heads to battle to be with her husband. The war soon draws to a close, and we then follow Diminga as she struggles to extract support and dignity from a post-revolutionary bureaucratic apparatus. The rare war film that insistently poses the question “what comes next?” this singularly thought-provoking political drama pays tribute to Guinea-Bissau’s struggle for independence while remaining critical of the society to come. 

Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Flora Gomes. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and UNESCO—in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna—to help locate, restore, and disseminate African cinema.