Movie Review (Toronto International Film Festival): Saloum
Director Jean Luc Herbulot’s Senegal/Congo coproduction Saloum is an insane mind-blower. This genre mash-up is as fun as it is suspenseful and poignant. Bangui’s Hyenas is a trio of mercenaries — Chaka (Yann Gael), Rafa (Roger Sallah) and Minuit (Mentor Ba) — on a mission to bring a cartel drug lord to Dakar, Senegal, with a load of gold on hand. When their plane encounters a problem, they are forced to land on the Saloum Delta. The four men seek shelter at a lodging camp run by a man named Omar (Bruno Henry), who Chaka claims to know, though Omar doesn’t recognize him. Minuit senses that Chaka is keeping a dangerous secret from the rest of the trio, and a mute woman guest named Awa (Evelyne Ily Juhen) complicates matters when she threatens to expose the men, who are going under aliases, to local police captain Souleymane (Ndiaga Mbow) unless they let her escape with them. Herbulot, who cowrote the
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