Fatima, l'Algérienne de Dakar

Exploring the legacies of decolonization and functioning as a testimony to the director’s profound investment in the historical, the film tells the story of Fatima, an Algerian woman who is raped during her country’s liberation war in 1957 by Souleymane Fall, a young Senegalese officer heading a column of the occupying Frenchcolonial army. A few years after his return to Senegal, Souleymane is summoned by his father and ordered to go back to Algeria to repair the harm he caused Fatima, who has been the object of unspeakable racism for carrying a black son. Souleymane, Fatima and their son Abdelkader ultimately return to Senegal to start a new lifepotentially full of promise.As a brilliant hymn to the pan-African project and a beautiful tribute to the figure of Frantz Fanon, FATIMA could also be looked at in terms of Hondo’s attempt at a political cinema aimed at creating what Deleuze refers to as a “people to come” (un peuple à venir). By bringing Fatima, the Algerian woman, to Dakar by way of cinema, Hondo does in effect partake in literally forging a pan-African people, a people that would emerge from the bringing together of the cultures for the production of a new Africa. Such is Med Hondo’s ultimate message in what ended up being his testament film.