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Mortu Nega Movie Review

Mortu Nega is a 1988 Bissau-Guinean historical drama film directed by Flora Gomes. It is a very elegantly made and sympathetic portrayal of war survivors.

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“Now a question. Is the struggle over?“

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It tells the story of a woman who searches through the country for her husband, a resistant, while the war for independence is raging. She finds him at last and saves his life. When peace finally arrives, they have to learn how to be together again and start living in a destroyed land. The movie premiered at Venice in 1988 and it received great reviews.

This was the first official feature film made in the independent state of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. The director of the movie is Flora Gomes, a renowned director from this country who ended up making a couple of other respected films as well, thus constituting the vast majority of this particular country’s entire cinematic output.

He is a terrific director, there is no question about it. He has a great knack at minimalism and executing a parable story that is not too didactic, but just sympathetic. The movie’s sense of time and place is evident from the very beginning, but it is the director’s emphasis on human struggle and emotion instead of war action set pieces that really resonated with me.

You see, there is very little of the actual war shown here. The war in question is Guinea-Bissau War of Independence, the war that they fought against the Portuguese back in the seventies. While they ended up winning, the country quickly endured a civil war, which led to even more casualties. This film is thus highly melancholic and a great tribute to all the fallen people from both of these conflicts.

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I would have liked to have seen more of the historical side of things as the film is unsurprisingly very scarce in period detail. Thus, it serves more as an anti-war parable and less as a historical lesson on this country’s history. For that, the viewers will need to read a bit of homework on their own. But just the lack of war sequences was refreshing to witness in a story like this.

The highlight was the focus on these women survivors and what they went through. The best scene in the film comes when the protagonist named Dominga has a conversation with another woman about what they both went through. It was a beautiful moment that really resonated with me. Another highlight is the scene in an otherwise lesser second half when she is talking with a woman and they strike a connection despite their different life experiences. All of these touching moments made for a very emotionally rewarding viewing experience.

Mortu Nega is overly short, minimalist in dialogue and slow in pace. It is basically a slice of life tale in a way, though set in a war period. That pace definitely did not make it an engaging watch, but the editing is strong as are the acting performances that elevated the otherwise thin character development.

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The film’s cinematography is excellent despite its limitations and the version on YouTube that I’ve watched looked surprisingly good for the movie’s age. It doesn’t have an epic scope, so there are no truly standout cinematic qualities to be found here, but its small-scale approach did lead to some excellent intimate moments with the main character.