Nome

(Sana Na N’Hada, Angola/France/Guinea-Bissau, 2023)

In Sana Na N’Hada’s Nome, this veteran director from Guinea-Bissau revisits the years of his youth and the turbulent struggle of Africans against the Portuguese colonial army from 1969 to the mid ‘70s. His approach is minimal and stylised, yet bursting with lyrical beauty and spiritual mystery.

The tale begins in a village far from the armed conflict. We observe the daily life of Nome (Marcelino António Ingira), his mother (Marta Dabo), and the woman he loves, his cousin Nambú (Binete Undonque). Nome leaves home to join the guerrillas and becomes a heroic leader – but the personal relationships he has abandoned will return to haunt him during the complicated and confused post-revolutionary period.

Nome is best viewed in tandem with Billy Woodberry’s excellent Mário (2024). Both films probe, in different ways, the hopeful, Utopian dimension of African revolutionary movements. Both confront, with the clear-sighted wisdom of hindsight, the seeds of corruption and betrayal that always existed in those situations. But neither embraces despair.

A special feature of Nome is the archival footage from the time originally shot by Na N’Hada and his comrades. These images do much more than guarantee documentary authenticity; in their very fragility, they allow the film to elevate the materiality of scratched, battered frames into a full-blown poetic language.

© Adrian Martin 11 December 2023