Hyènes

Trauma/Memory: 20 years after Touki Bouki (1973), Anta, the protagonist of Mambéty’s second feature, returns. In HYÈNES, a free adaptation of Dürrenmatt’s play “The Old Woman’s Visit”, she has come into money abroad and would like to transfer her immeasurable fortune to the inhabitants of Kolbane, the place of her birth. On one condition: in return for 100 billion francs, the residents of the village are supposed to kill Dramaan, the owner of the local shop who once got her pregnant and abandoned her. Initially, the village resists “We’re Africans, but the drought hasn’t turned us into savages!”.  But dreams of riches and affluence soon make their moral principles start to totter. Mambéty’s neo-colonial parable shows the frightening dynamics of a capitalist society.