The first African feature film to focus on the civil wars convulsing the continent from Sierra Leone to Somalia. It provides compelling insights into how ordinary people around the world get swept up in extraordinary events. Its timeless story of two childhood friends turned into political foes personalizes the terrible costs of internecine strife. Daresalam is not only director Issa Serge Coelo's first feature but one of the first feature films from Chad.
DARESALAM begins in the 1970s with two young men, Koni and Djimi, starting adult life as a smith and farmer in a prosperous village. Their placid existence is broken when the central government insists on buying the farmer's millet at below market prices and then browbeats villagers to pay not only taxes but also a national loan to help fight the guerilla war. The estrangement between government and governed is symbolized by the fact that the government ministers must speak French, the language of the former colonial oppressors, because they don't know the indigenous language. When an over-bearing official attempts to arrest the village elder, Koni impulsively spears him; in retaliation the government burns the village and massacres the inhabitants.
Official Selection at the Berlin International Film Festival.
"A poignant essay on civil war in modern-day Chad, is so achingly beautiful and sad I watched with tears in my eyes...Ends on a note of un-ironic optimism that is more radical than all he calculated nihilism served up on Western movie screens." - LA Weekly
"Spectacularly photographed. Few films have left me weeping for their beauty on a small screen. Daresalam brilliantly weaves memory, hope and despair." - San Francisco Weekly