Mortu Nega (Gomes, 1988): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 12.50pm
69th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (8th - 19th October 2025) DAY 5
With its date at the end of the year, London is a "festival of festivals", as the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin put it in one of his previews,
so the films shown have mostly been seen and commented on by critics
who have watched the features at such high-profile festivals as Cannes,
Venice, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin.
So I'm making it simple with one recommendation a day. I will be concentrating on the repertory choices but I've also read the
reviews of the contemporary releases and talked to and listened to the trusted critics all year and I
am as confident as I can be that this is the pick of the movies within
the parameters I have set. Firstly, there's no point highlighting the
major gala films - they will be sold out quickly. Secondly, there is
little to be gained in paying the higher Festival ticket prices to see
films that are out in Britain soon. I will be returning to the London
Festival films worthy of seeing and set to be released in the coming
months on this blog as and when they get a general release in London.
Here then (from October 8th to October 19th) are the films you are likely
to be able to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in
London very soon unless you go the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't
worry if some of the recommended films are sold out as there are always
some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each
screening. Here is the information you need to get those standby tickets.
This film also screens at BFI Southbank on Saturday October 18th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
One of the best contemporary war films I know is this singular 1988
feature, the first by Guinea-Bissau filmmaker Flora Gomes (Po di
sangui). The first half, as elemental and as unadorned as Samuel
Fuller’s The Steel Helmet, concentrates on women fighting alongside
guerrillas at the end of Guinea-Bissau’s war of independence in 1973,
attacked by Portuguese helicopters as they travel on foot close to the
border. The second half, more diffuse and at times more rhetorical,
deals with the ambiguous conditions of the war’s aftermath. The title
means “those whom death refused,” and true to that notion the heroine
(Bia Gomes) has been fighting for about a decade. Gomes (no relation to
the director) manages to convey the loss of her children in a wordless
and underplayed moment that shook me to my core. Flora Gomes appears in a
cameo as president of a postwar sector.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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