Daresalam (English: "Let There Be Peace"[1]) is a 2000 dramatic film by Chadian director Issa Serge Coelo. It has been considered one of the very few recent African films that has treated the theme of the internecine conflicts that have ravaged the African continent since independence.[2] While set in a fictional African country called Daresalam, it reflects the civil war that ravaged Chad during the 1960s and 1970s.[3]
The film takes place in a fictional central African country (called Daresalam, "the Land of Peace" in Arabic) amidst a civil war. It features as main characters two young friends, Koni (Haikal Zakaria) and Djimi (Abdoulaye Ahmat), whose peaceful existence is interrupted when the central government irrupts in their village harassing them and browbeating the villagers into paying new taxes to help fight the civil war.
A heated discussion ensues, which degenerates, causing the death of a government official, which causes in retaliation the burning of the village and the massacre of its inhabitants. Koni and Djimi now pass with others to the rebellion, but the rebels eventually split, with Djimi remaining with the hardliners and Koni going instead with a faction that supports compromise with the government, thus estranging the two friends. Koni will later be executed in a coup, while Djimi will leave the rebels and return to his home village with a war widow and a sewing machine left to him by a fallen combatant, with which he can attempt to start a new life for himself and his family.[4]
Director Issa Coelo, in speaking of his film, explains he wanted to expose the vicious circle that originates when a despotic government causes the outbreak of a civil war, which ends to feed itself endlessly, as each power maintains itself through despotism, thus generating its own armed opposition. In Coelo's words, "war becomes the only economy of the country. Violence, the only way of speech and communication possible. ... With in mind the myth of Cain and Abel, Daresalam narrates how this war machine finishes to pit one against the other two friends, at the beginning moved by the same ideals. This story is meant to be a speech against war and for humanity's survival."[5]
Reception & Evaluation
The LA Weekly judged the film positively, calling it "achingly beautiful and sad", and appreciates the final, which "ends on a note of un-ironic optimism that is more radical than all the calculated nihilism currently being served up on Western movie screens", and compared the film to Barbet Schroeder's Our Lady of the Assassins in their common ambition "to shed light on shadowy existences".[6]
The film is analyzed by Roy Armes, that observes how Coelo avoids any heroics, showing the rebels' limitations and the confusion of the conflict. While judging the work "a sincere and serious study of a key aspect of contemporary Africa", he feels that the film lacks the passion of Med Hondo's works on the Polisario rebels, possibly because of Coelo's belief that "cinema should ask questions rather than give answers", which could explain the distance we are maintained from the two main characters.[2] The film is also mentioned by Françoise Pfaff as an example of a new series of African historical films, which avoid the oversimplification of the past, and in particular Daresalam in its problematic description of post-independence Africa is seen as close to Flora Gomes' Mortu Nega.[1]
Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is an independent state at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. The landlocked country is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon to the southwest, Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. Chad has a population of 16 million, of which 1.6 million live in the capital and largest city of N'Djamena. With a total area of around 1,284,000 km2, Chad is the fifth-largest country in Africa and the twentieth largest nation by area in the world.
Politics of Djibouti takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the executive power is exercised by the President and the Government. Legislative power is vested in both the Government and the National Assembly. The party system and legislature are dominated by the socialist People's Rally for Progress. In April 2010, a new constitutional amendment was approved. The President serves as both the head of state and head of government, and is directly elected for single six-year term. Government is headed by the President, who appoints the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers on the proposal of the latter. There is also a 65-member chamber of deputies, where representatives are popularly elected for terms of five years. Administratively, the country is divided into five regions and one city, with eleven additional district subdivisions. Djibouti is also part of various international organisations, including the United Nations and Arab League.
Idriss Déby Itno was a Chadian politician and military officer who was the president of Chad from 1990 until his death in 2021 during the Northern Chad offensive. His term of office of more than 30 years makes him Chad's longest-serving president.
The First Sudanese Civil War was a conflict from 1955 to 1972 between the northern part of Sudan and the southern Sudan region that demanded representation and more regional autonomy. The war was divided into four major stages: initial guerrilla warfare, the creation of the Anyanya insurgency, political strife within the government and establishment of the South Sudan Liberation Movement. Around a million people died over the course of the nearly 17-year long war.
This article covers the period of the history of Sudan between 1985 and 2019 when the Sudanese Defense Minister Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab seized power from Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry in the 1985 Sudanese coup d'état. Not long after, Lieutenant General Omar al-Bashir, backed by an Islamist political party, the National Islamic Front, overthrew the short lived government in a coup in 1989 where he ruled as President until his fall in April 2019. During Bashir's rule, also referred to as Bashirist Sudan, or as they called themselves the al-Ingaz regime, he was re-elected three times while overseeing the independence of South Sudan in 2011. His regime was criticized for human rights abuses, atrocities and genocide in Darfur and allegations of harboring and supporting terrorist groups in the region while being subjected to United Nations sanctions beginning in 1995, resulting in Sudan's isolation as an international pariah.
The Mozambican Civil War was a civil war fought in Mozambique from 1977 to 1992. Like many regional African conflicts during the late twentieth century, the impetus for the Mozambican Civil War included local dynamics exacerbated greatly by the polarizing effects of Cold War politics. The war was fought between Mozambique's ruling Marxist Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), the anti-communist insurgent forces of the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), and a number of smaller factions such as the PRM, UNAMO, COREMO, UNIPOMO, and FUMO.
Félix Malloum or Félix Malloum Ngakoutou Bey-Ndi was a Chadian military officer and politician who served as the second President of Chad from 1975 to 1978.
The Chadian Civil War of 2005–2010 began on December 18, 2005. Since its independence from France in 1960, Chad has been swamped by civil wars between the Arab-Muslims of the north and the Sub-Saharan-Christians of the south. As a result, leadership and presidency in Chad drifted back and forth between the Christian southerners and Muslim northerners. When one side was in power, the other side usually started a revolutionary war to counter it.
Throughout its history, Darfur has been the home to several cultures and kingdoms, such as the Daju and Tunjur kingdoms. The recorded history of Darfur begins in the seventeenth century, with the foundation of the Fur Sultanate by the Keira dynasty. In 1875, the Anglo-Egyptian condominium in Khartoum ended the dynasty. The British allowed Darfur a measure of autonomy until formal annexation in 1916. However, the region remained underdeveloped through the period of colonial rule and after independence in 1956. The majority of national resources were directed toward the riverine Arabs clustered along the Nile near Khartoum. This pattern of structural inequality and overly underdevelopment resulted in increasing restiveness among Darfuris. The influence of regional geopolitics and war by proxy, coupled with economic hardship and environmental degradation, from soon after independence led to sporadic armed resistance from the mid-1980s. The continued violence culminated in an armed resistance movement around 2003.
The Djiboutian Civil War was a conflict in Djibouti, lasting from 1991 to 1994 and resulting in thousands of fatalities. The uneven power sharing between the Issas and the Afars led to the Civil War that ravaged the country for three years.
The Cinema of Chad is small though growing. The first film made in the country appears to have been 1958 John Huston adventure film The Roots of Heaven, filmed when the country was still a part of French Equatorial Africa. Documentary filmmaker Edouard Sailly made a series of shorts in the 1960s depicting daily life in the country. During this period there were a number of cinemas in the country, including in N'Djamena Le Normandie, Le Vogue, the Rio, the Étoile and the Shéherazade, and also the Rex in Sarh, the Logone in Moundou and the Ciné Chachati in Abéché. The film industry suffered severely in the 1970s-80s as Chad became engulfed in a series of civil wars and foreign military interventions; film production stopped, and all the cinemas in Chad closed down. Following the ousting of dictator Hissène Habré by Idriss Déby in 1990 the situation in the country stabilised somewhat, allowing the development of a nascent film industry, most notably with the work of directors Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Issa Serge Coelo and Abakar Chene Massar. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun has won awards at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, Venice International Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival. In January 2011 Le Normandie in N'Djamena, said to now be the only cinema in Chad, re-opened with government support.
Bye Bye Africa is a 1999 award-winning Chadian film. It was the first by Chadian director Mahamat Saleh Haroun, who also starred. The docu-drama centers on a fictionalized version of Haroun.
Issa Serge Coelo is a Chadian film director. Born in Biltine, Chad, he studied history in Paris and film at the École supérieure de réalisation audiovisuelle (ÉSRA). He then worked as a cameraman at Métropole Télévision, France 3, TV5MONDE and CFI before creating the 1994 short film Un taxi pour Aouzou. The film was well-received, being nominated for a 1997 César Award in the category Best Short Film - Fiction. This was followed by the feature films Daresalam (2000) and Tartina City (2006). He also portrayed himself in the 1999 film Bye Bye Africa, which was directed by Chad's other prominent director Mahamat Saleh Haroun.
DP75: Tartina City is a 2007 dramatic film by Chadian director Issa Serge Coelo, now at his second feature film. The film has won the Innovation Award at the 31st Montreal World Film Festival. While the country where the action is set remains unnamed, the context is that of Chadian history in the 1980s and 1990s. The name's title is taken from the "tartina", a mixture of bread and sheep's bowels served to the prisoners.
Youssouf Djaoro is a Chadian film actor.
The Chadian Civil War of 1965–1979 was waged by several rebel factions against two Chadian governments. The initial rebellion erupted in opposition to Chadian President François Tombalbaye, whose regime was marked by authoritarianism, extreme corruption, and favoritism. In 1975 Tombalbaye was murdered by his own army, and a military government headed by Félix Malloum emerged and continued the war against the insurgents. Following foreign interventions by Libya and France, the fracturing of the rebels into rival factions, and an escalation of the fighting, Malloum stepped down in March 1979. This paved the way for a new national government, known as "Transitional Government of National Unity" (GUNT).
The Central African Republic Civil War is an ongoing civil war in the Central African Republic (CAR) involving the government, rebels from the Séléka coalition, and Anti-balaka militias.
In 2016, the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) and the Military Command Council for the Salvation of the Republic (CCMSR) began a rebellion against the Chadian government. From their rear bases in southern Libya, FACT and CCMSR have launched offensives and raids into Northern Chad seeking to overthrow the government of former president Idriss Déby, who had been in power since a December 1990 coup. Other rebel groups are also involved in the insurgency, though to a lesser extent.
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