A Screaming Man

Poignant family/war drama
First things first, I've been a long-time follower and fan of the Film Movement library of foreign and indie movies. When I saw this recently, I picked it up, literally not knowing anything about the movie, but the "Film Movement" stamp on this movie was enough for me. Glad I picked it up.

"A Screaming Man" (Un Homme Qui Crie) (originally released in 2010; 91 min.) brings the tale of a father and son who are both working as pool attendants/care takers at a plosh hotel in Chad. The hotel changes ownership, and as a result the father is relegated to hotel security guard (while the son remains the pool care taker). But things get complicated further in a hurry, as the Chad government, fighting a rebel uprising, is looking for more "volunteers" for its army, and the son is volunteered/drafted. After the son goes into the army, the son's pregnant girlfriend arrives at the scene. The country drifts into ever more greater chaos. I won't give more away of the plot, you'll just have...
Quiet and Engrossing Father-Son Drama
Set in the civil war-torn country of present-day Chad, "A Screaming Man" ("Un Homme qui Crie") follows the heart-wrenching story of Adam Ousmane (Youssouf Djaoro), a former African swimming champion in his sixties. As a life guard at a swimming pool of a fancy hotel in Chad, Adam has been working with his only son Abdel (Dioucounda Koma), who is also a life guard. Adam (called "champion" by other employees) loves his job more than anything, the only connection with his past.

However, the hotel's new manager is planning to downsize the number of the staff, thinking the hotel doesn't need two guards. While Abdel takes over the father's position, Adam starts working as a gatekeeper, a job he does not like. What makes Adam's life difficult is that he has been pressured by the local chief to pay money for the government army.

Resented and despaired, Adam makes a decision that will change the life of himself and his son.

Shot in Chad, the...
L'oeil clouè n'est-pas mort.
Un Homme Qui Crie (A Screaming Man) (Mahamet-Saleh Haroun, 2010)

Despite its title, A Screaming Man is a very quiet film. It comes from Chad, which if you're not up on your African geography forms a slight bit of Nigeria's northeastern border. While I certainly can't claim to be any sort of authority on Nollywood's output, having only seen a half-dozen or so flicks that have come out of the billion-dollar-a-year-plus Nigerian/Ghanian film industries, but A Screaming Man seems about as far from the Nollywood axis as it is possible to get in African film; there is much more of Ousmane Sembene's minimalism here than there is the Nollywood push towards spectacle.

Adam Ousmane (given what I said above, no way that name is a coincidence) (Dry Season's Youssouf Djaoro) is a former swimming champ who's now the pool attendant at an upscale hotel. He has a good relationship with his twenty-year-old son and apprentice Abdel (Caché's Dioucounda Koma); Abdel feels the...
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