Maona Art: Saloum

As part of Showroom Cinema’s new partnership with programmers Maona Art, specialising in contemporary African cinema, there will be a special screening of 2021 Senegalese Crime Horror/Thriller, Saloum.

Mercenary group Bangui's Hyenas are tasked with extracting a Mexican drug lord from Guinea-Bissau amid the 2003 coup d'état and taking him to Dakar.

On route, a leak with the group's airplane forces them to land in remote Sine-Saloum, where they must reckon with suspicious residents, difficult environmental conditions and supernatural events before they are able to depart.

Shot down after fleeing a coup and extracting a drug lord from Guinea-Bissau, a group of mercenaries must lie low at a remote holiday camp, stash their stolen haul, and repair their plane to escape back to Dakar, Senegal.

“Saloum demands close attention; it certainly earns it too. Keen eyes might notice how the film is billed as a “southern” in the opening credits. Sure enough, Saloum does not stop at simply reinterpreting the tropes of the western but wholly retools its influences with local flavours.” – Phuong Le, The Guardian