African Film Festival: The Hero

The Hero Zézé Gamboa (Angola/Portugal/France, 2004)

Introduced by Cornelius Moore

Cornelius Moore is director of the Library of African Cinema, California Newsreel's African film distribution project.

(O herói). The southern African nation of Angola is only recently emerging from a combined forty years of anticolonial and civil war. The Hero intertwines postwar stories of characters from different strata of Angolan society who—like their country—are trying to reconstruct their lives. First-time director Zézé Gamboa compassionately presents the stories of grief, loss, resilience, and hope that are so much a part of the global South. The hero of the title is Vitório (Oumar Makéna Diop), an unemployed and homeless war veteran, awaiting a prosthetic leg to replace the one he lost after stepping on a land mine. In another part of town is the young, streetwise Manu (Milton Coelho), whose father is MIA from the war. By chance, Vitório meets two women who transform his life, one of them Manu's teacher. Gamboa is a unique and acclaimed new voice—The Hero won the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

—Cornelius Moore, S.F. International Film Festival

Written by Carla Baptista. Photographed by Mario Masini. With Oumar Makéna Diop, Milton Coelho, Patrícia Bull, Neusa Borges. (97 mins, In Portuguese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From California Newsreel)