Guelwaar (1992)
Average Rating: 8.2/10
Reviews Counted: 8
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 8.5/10
Critic Reviews: 5
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 70
My Rating
Movie Info
This powerful, pointed and multi-layered political satire from Senegal's great director Ousman Sembene will provide considerable food for thought; especially amongst those who consider foreign charity a beneficial humanitarian action. It also provides insight into Sembene's thoughts on cultural genocide, AIDS, and corruption. The story centers around the funeral services of the outspoken Pierre Henri Thioune or Guelwaar (meaning Noble One) as his friends and family call him. Guelwaar was a
Jan 6, 1992 Wide
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All Critics (8) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (8) | Rotten (0)
Sembène, with a tense restraint, evokes a dependent country that maintains its dignity through nationalist pomp and local pride, and portrays one long-suffering family that bears Senegal's burdens in microcosm.
Sembene is hardly a didactic director and in fact invests his characters with such complexities that they are sometimes compromised.
Alternately wise and very funny in its treatment of tribalism and in its grasp of neocolonial corruption.
The film is astonishingly beautiful.
A rich, vivid and universal portrait of a community that is revealed fully as it reacts to a crisis: a community that will be buried by the past if it cannot look to the future. There's a lesson here, and Mr. Sembene presents it with grace and ease.
The renowned Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene reconfirms his stature both as a master storyteller and a distinctively humanitarian artist.
Through Sembène's wry attention to detail, we observe a great many things about village life that would otherwise pass unnoticed.
A funny, articulate and moving satire on the state of modern Africa.
Audience Reviews for Guelwaar
Super Reviewer
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]With "Guelwaar," Ousmane Sembene aims to show the state of chaos that his home country of Senegal is in by dramatizing how a minor bureaucratic mistake can quickly get out of hand.(Not to mention how silly religion is.) But in the end, he does have a great deal of hope that the people will find pride in themselves and not demean themselves by begging.[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]And politicians being opportunistic bastards seem to be a universal phenomenon.[/font]
[font=Century Gothic] [/font]
Super Reviewer
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Top Critic
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]With "Guelwaar," Ousmane Sembene aims to show the state of chaos that his home country of Senegal is in by dramatizing how a minor bureaucratic mistake can quickly get out of hand.(Not to mention how silly religion is.) But in the end, he does have a great deal of hope that the people will find pride in themselves and not demean themselves by begging.[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]And politicians being opportunistic bastards seem to be a universal phenomenon.[/font]
[font=Century Gothic] [/font]