Train of Salt and Sugar” on at Oshana Film Festival

AfricAvenir announced the Opening Film of the 1st ever Oshana Film Festival. This Friday, 17 March, the festival will kick off at 6pm, at the Epic Cinema, in Ongwediva. Hon Governor Clemens Kashuupulwa will open the festival. Tickets via Epic Cinema, Ongwediva.

Background on the movie:

Film: The Train of Salt and Sugar, Mozambique, 2016, Director: Licinio Azevedo, 93 min
Mozambique is in the midst of civil war. A single train connects Nampula to Malawi. No civilians are allowed and yet hundreds risk their lives through 700km of sabotaged tracks. Salomão and Taiar are two soldiers who don’t get along. Rosa is a young nurse on her way to her first job, who soon becomes an object of desire. Mariamu, her close friend, only hopes to trade salt for sugar. Amongst bullets and laughter, life goes on and stories unfold as the train advances under attack, ever so slowly, towards the next stop.

Lorenco Esposito, the programme director of the Lorcarno Film Festival, where the film had its World Premiere highlights: “We’re on a train of love and war, headed towards Hell or Heaven, where women have to defend themselves from the soldiers’ rage, even though some fall in love with them and give birth to their children under the breathtaking vistas of distant Africa. The road is long and dangerous, over 700 kilometers that reek of blood and death, interrupted by continuous sabotage: assaults by militias at the service of warlords and suicide attacks by nameless troops. The peaks of violence, the most painful deaths and even the duels feel as if they were yearning for an off-camera exit. They’re restrained not because they’re anti-spectacular, but to tell the story of the melancholic dignity of a people robbed of their dreams and hopes.”

At its Africa Premiere, the film won Best Film at the Joburg Film Festival in November 2016.