''Soleil Ô'' (; "Oh, Sun") is a 1970 French-Mauritanian

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

written and directed by

Med Hondo Med Hondo (born Mohamed Abid Hondo; 4 May 1935 – 2 March 2019) was a Mauritanian-born French director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Considered a founding father of African cinema, he is known for his controversial films dealing with issu ...

. The title refers to a West Indian song that tells of the pain of the black people from Dahomey (now

Benin Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north ...

) who were taken to the Caribbean as slaves.

Premise

A black immigrant makes his way to Paris in search of his Gaul ancestors. The immigrants desperately seek work and a place to live, but find themselves face to face with indifference, rejection, and humiliation, before heeding the final call for uprising.

Cast

Robert Liensol The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...

as Visitor * Théo Légitimus as Afro Girl * Gabriel Glissand *

Bernard Fresson Bernard Fresson (27 May 1931 – 20 October 2002) was a French actor who primarily worked in film. Born in Reims, France, to a French baker, Fresson attended the Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève, majoring in law. He studied in Tania Balachova's ...

as Friend * Yane Barry as White Girl * Greg Germain * Armand Meffre *Med Hondo as the narrator

Reception

The film played during the International Critics' Week at the 1970

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

where it received critical acclaim. It received a Golden Leopard award at the 1970

Locarno International Film Festival The Locarno Film Festival is an annual film festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, sh ...

. In his ''Family Guide to Movies on Video'',

Henry Herx Henry Herx (June 29, 1933 – August 15, 2012) was an American film critic who specialized in creating brief capsule reviews intended for Roman Catholic moviegoers. During his 35-year career, Herx reviewed thousands of films for the Media Review O ...

wrote that the film's "use of ironic humor and lively music keeps the plight of the black emigrant worker from becoming totally depressing." In ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'',

Richard Brody Richard Brody (born 1958) is an American film critic who has written for ''The New Yorker'' since 1999. Education Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York, and attended Princeton University, receiving a B.A. in comparative literature in 1980. He first ...

wrote that "Making friends among France’s white population, 'the main character''finds their empathy condescending and oblivious, and his sense of isolation and persecution raises his identity crisis to a frenzied pitch. Hondo offers a stylistic

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

to reflect the protagonist’s extremes of experience, from

docudrama Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television and film, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama and "a fact-based representation of real event". Docudramas typic ...

and musical numbers to

slapstick Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such a ...

absurdity, from

dream sequence A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other ...

s and bourgeois

melodrama A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or exces ...

to political analyses."

Restoration

In 2017, ''Soleil Ô'' was given a restoration by the

Cineteca di Bologna The Cineteca di Bologna is a film archive in Bologna, Italy. It was founded on 18 May 1962. Since 1989, it has been a member of the Fédération internationale des archives du film (FIAF). It has been a member of the Association des cinémath� ...

with the supervision of Med Hondo. Funding came from the

George Lucas George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. Lucas is best known for creating the ''Star Wars'' and ''Indiana Jones'' franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairm ...

Family Foundation and the

World Cinema Project The World Cinema Project (WCP), formerly World Cinema Foundation, is a non-profit organization devoted to the preservation and restoration of neglected world cinema, founded by Martin Scorsese. History Founded in 2007 as the World Cinema Foundati ...

, as part of the latter's restoration initiative called the African Film Heritage Project.

References

External links

*
''Soleil Ô: “I Bring You Greetings from Africa”''
an essay by Aboubakar Sanogo at the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...