Mahamat-Saleh Haroun/ France/Belgium/Chad/ 2010/ 92 min/ N/C 15+

Showing as part of the Glasgow Film Festival @ Cineworld, 22nd – 23rd Feb

African cinema generally doesn’t get much exposure in Europe, but landing the Jury prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival makes director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s latest effort a notable exception. With a plot involving a fifty-five year old man losing the job he loves and becoming withdrawn from his wife and son, A Screaming Man is essentially about a mid-life crisis, however the (arguable) novelty for the western European viewer is that the mid-life crisis is suffered by a Chadian man living in poverty during an unfolding civil war. Adam (Youssouf Djaoro), a former swimming champion, has worked as a pool attendant at a luxury hotel for many years, alongside his beloved son Ahmed, but privatisation of the hotel and resulting cutbacks lead to Adam reluctantly having to give up his job to his son. Meanwhile, rebel skirmishes lead to heightened tensions as Chad’s government deploy the army and start drafting.

With a quietly understated but very powerful performance by Djaoro in the lead role, A Screaming Man does an exemplary job of showing rather than telling. Very often, it’s the silences between characters that underline the pain and tension and emphasise what has been left unsaid. Similarly, the escalating war is not marked by loud explosions or frenzied attacks; instead by the background interruptions of TV news bulletins, an occasional fighter plane heard flying overhead, ineffectual military patrol megaphone announcements; but most of all, by a gradually enveloping silence as curfews are imposed and residents quietly pack up their bags and flee. The slow pace will not be to everyone’s taste, but it certainly heightens the sense of ennui at the heart of this complex film.