Saloum

Explosive action, supernatural horror and subversive politics collide in this electrifying Senegalese film about a trio of mercenaries marooned in a spooky coastal paradise.

Set against the backdrop of the 2003 coup d’état in Guinea-Bissau, this genre-scrambling, cross-continental thriller follows a trio of legendary mercenaries transporting a Mexican drug dealer to Dakar when their plane is forced to alight near the lush Sine-Saloum Delta region. This eerie coastal paradise soon turns malevolent when a Deaf woman and a cop suspiciously show up, tapping into something otherworldly and unleashing a manic adventure at breakneck momentum.

Congolese writer/director Jean Luc Herbulot’s hard and hectic hybrid work fires on all imaginable pistons, drawing on everything from spaghetti westerns, monster movies and chanbara flicks, to From Dusk Till Dawn and Predator. All of these various influences are then remixed into a distinctly pan-African cocktail that taps into the region’s mythology and folklore, including a transposed and reimagined take on the American frontier myth. With radiant visuals and multilingual dialogue (including the rarely depicted Wolof and sign language), Saloum is expansive, expertly executed and simply a total blast.

“Strap in; Jean Luc Herbulot’s Saloum is nothing less than 84 minutes of pure African genre mayhem, with little interest in pausing long enough for you to catch your breath.” – Film International