“Resonates for its lacerating comedic writing and pacing.”—Clayton Dillard, Slant Magazine
One of the treasures of African cinema, Senegalese master Mambéty’s long-delayed follow-up to his canonical Touki Bouki is a hallucinatory comic adaptation of Swiss avant-garde writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play, The Visit, Mambéty’s imagining follows a now-rich woman returning to her poor desert hometown to propose a deal to the populace: her fortune, in exchange for the death of the man who years earlier abandoned her and left her with his child. Per its title, Hyenas is a film of sinister, mocking laughter, and a biting satire of contemporary Senegal, whose post-colonial dreams are faced with erosion by western materialism.
Winner of a special Jury Award from the Chicago International Film Festival and selection of the Cannes Film Festival. Restored in 2018 from the original negative. 1992, Senegal, DCP, in Wolof, French, and Japanese with English subtitles, 110 minutes. Recommended for 16+.