Rising Up at Night

Tonga Saa immediately impressed me with its audacious non-fiction narrative style, particularly within the context of African cinema. The film shuns the conventional forms and signatures of many contemporary African films and is reminiscent of early classical African cinema by auteurs such as Ousmane Sembène, which espoused realism and was unconcerned with the restrictions and limitations of the fiction/non-fiction cinematic dichotomy.

The film offers socio-political commentary from the participants themselves, shaped by the filmmaker’s eye and filmic decisions, on contemporary African realities within a historical colonial context. In this film, Congo is merely a case study of what has transpired in many sub-Saharan African countries since colonial independence. The filmmaker avoids being didactic in this commentary but refuses to shy away from presenting a reflective image of Africans within their societies. These images do not place the blame for socio-political and infrastructural challenges solely at the feet of any one person or political entity, but rather provide avenues for self-reflection for everyone involved.

While the film is by no means limited to African audiences, another distinct achievement is that, rather than appropriating African problems for a foreign audience, it is as concerned with remediating the challenges facing the African societies involved as it is with compellingly narrating African issues to interested audiences.

Badewa Ajibade
Filmmaker and programmer