Harpur Cinema Presents: Sarraounia

Med Hondo, Burkina Faso, 1986, 122 min.

Friday, April 25, 2025, and Sunday, April 27, 2025: Lecture Hall 6, 7:30 pm. Doors open at 7:00 pm. $4 Single Admission

Director Med Hondo unflinchingly depicts the horrors of colonial occupation and conflict with a realistic, epic style, to adapt Abdoulaye Mamani’s Sarraounia, a historical novel about the West African Battle of Lougou. With an incisive eye toward the psychology of warfare, Hondo charts the brutal arrogance of French commanders Captain Paul Voulet and Lieutenant Julien Chanoine, as well as the fierce determination of Sarraounia, the titular Azna queen, a revered leader who inspires her people to fight the French army when most of the surrounding tribes have made deals with the invaders or joined their forces. Ready to meet her adversaries on the battlefield to defend her tribe and its way of life, native oral history claims she was a witch who could hurl fire at the invaders and any crops that were blazed to ash regrew overnight with more than enough food to keep the warriors going. Rarely screened today, Sarraounia remains one of the greatest experiments in historical-surrealism to come from Africa.