Hyenas – 1992

• 2023/07/14

Djibril Diop Mambéty, who burst onto the international scene with his classic Touki Bouki, transposes Friedrich Durrenmatt’s Visit to his native Senegal. What follows is a fine balancing act, of mining every penny out of the absurdity of the tale while at the same time creating a sense of mounting doom this story rarely manages to sustain. Of course, the setting carries a lot of baggage, and Mambéty has his way with it too, exposing the ravages his land has experiences at the hands of great powers, while satirizing the opportunism with which many of the locals court these powers. It’s the perfect trifecta: a great piece of entertainment, a masterclass in literary adaptation AND a window into a cinema that deserves to be showcased a lot more.