‘Hyènes’: A tale of love and revenge at AF

Senegalese film director Djibril Diop Mambéty's French films Hyenes will be screened at the 3 pm on Tuesday, Janaury 15 and at 6.30 pm on Wednesday January 16 at the Alliance Francaise.

An African adaptation of Friedrich Durrenmatt's famous Swiss play, The Visit, Hyènes (Hyenas) tells the story of Linguere Ramatou, an aging, wealthy woman who revisits her home village--and Mambéty's--of Colobane. Linguere offers a disturbing proposition to the people of Colobane and lavishes luxuries upon them to persuade them. This embittered woman, "as rich as the World Bank," will bestow upon Colobane a fortune in exchange for the murder of Dramaan Drameh, a local shopkeeper who abandoned her after a love affair and her illegitimate pregnancy when she was 16.

The intimate story of love and revenge between Linguere and Dramaan parallels a critique of neocolonialism and African consumerism. Mambéty once said, "We have sold our souls too cheaply. We are done for if we have traded our souls for money" [5] Although its characters are distinct, Mambéty considered Hyènes to be a continuation of Touki Bouki and a further exploration of its themes of power and insanity. Wasis Diop, younger brother of Djibril Diop Mambéty, is responsible for the film's soundtrack.

The director Djibril Diop Mambéty was an actor, orator, composer and poet. Though he made only a small number of films, they received international acclaim for their original and experimental cinematic technique and non-linear, unconventional narrative style. Born to a Muslim family near Dakar, Senegal's capital city, Mambety was Wolof. He died in 1998 while being treated for lung cancer in a Paris hospital.