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Guelwaar (French: Guelwaar, légende africaine de l'Afrique du XXIè siècle)

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Release Date - 2 September 1992 (Venice)

Distributed by -

Countries - Germany

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Cast
Omar Seck as Adjutant Chef Major Gora

Ndiawar Diop as Barthélémy

Mame Ndoumbe Diop as Nagou Marie Thioune

Thierno Ndiaye Barthelemy as Pierre Henri Thioune 'Guelwaar'

Isseu Niang as Véronique

Myriam Niang as Helen

Lamine Mane as Dibocor

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Production
Guelwaar was Ousmane Sembène's seventh feature film. Unlike his previous features, with the exception of Xala, Sembène wrote and shot Guelwaar as a film before he adapted it into a novel in 1996.

The film was an international co-production between the French Galatée Films, Senegalese Films Domirev, American New Yorker Films, British Channel 4, and German Westdeutscher Rundfunk. The film used entirely nonprofessional actors, though some had previously worked on other films by noted Senegalese directors including Djibril Diop Mambéty, and Ababacar Samb-Makharam. Post-production took place entirely in Morocco. ADR and additional music was recorded in Dakar.

Release
The film was slated for release in Senegal alongside the 1993 elections, but was blocked from being shown as it dealt with themes critical to Senegal's governmental policy regarding foreign aid. It premiered on September 2 1992, at the 49th Venice International Film Festival.

Guelwaar was released theatrically in France by Les Films du Paradoxe in 1993. It received an American home video release with independent distributor New Yorker Films that same year, though it has been out of print since the company shut down in 2018.

Reception
The film was generally praised by western critics following its Venice premiere, being hailed as the culmination of Sembène's career to that point. Janet Maslin of The New York Times said it was "powerful", "political", and "universal", comparing the narrative structure to Spike Lee's 1989 film Do the Right Thing. In a review for the American release of the film, Ann Hornaday of The Baltimore Sun called it "a fine, moving film", going on to praise it for its "vivid and fully realized characters". Noted film critic Roger Ebert called the movie "astonishingly beautiful", and gave it a perfect score.

Since its release, film critics and historians have gone on to examine and praise Guelwaar for its role in African cinema, and its representation and demystification of postcolonial Africa. Nigerian actor and professor Awam Amkpa praised Sembène and the film's plural representation of African identity in a 2010 article. Through the BBC, Mahen Bonetti, director of African Film Festival, Inc., listed Guelwaar as the 8th 'greatest foreign-language film'.

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 100% based on 8 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.2/10.

Awards
The film won The President of the Italian Senate's Gold Medal at the 49th Venice International Film Festival. It was also nominated for a Golden Lion at that same festival, but lost to Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju.