WINDHOEK
Oshana governor, Clemens Kashuupulwa, officially opens the festival today and tickets are available to the public at the Epic Cinema at OK.
The Train of Salt and Sugar is about Mozambique in the midst of a 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 kilometres 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 last November. The 1st Oshana Film Festival has been organised by AfricAvenir, in partnership with NEPC, LandRover, Ongwediva Town Coucil, Rossing Foundation, EpicCinema, Captein Doregos and the Oshana Regional Council. For more information,
visit: www.africavenir.org or contact AfricAvenir on 0813048894, 0855630949 or email africavenir.whk@gmail.com