Saloum was one of our favorites out of Fantastic Fest last year, and we were so excited to see it would be streaming on Shudder this month. Drug lords, a coup, mercenaries, magic. Writer/director Jean Luc Herbulot creates a genre cocktail with tons of surprises in store. As a lifelong lover of movies, Herbulot could not help but notice the lack of African heroes in his beloved films, so he created some.
The story takes place in 2003, and follows three mercenaries extracting a drug lord out of Guinea-Bissau as they are forced to hide in the mystical region of Saloum, Senegal.
The story is a blend of African reality along with a healthy dose of fantasy elements to create a world uniquely Herbulot. The influences are evident here; Herbulot cites “Sergio Leone’s Westerns, Akira Kurosawa’s Samurai films, Jean Pierre Melville’s Noirs, George Miller’s post-apocalyptic action, and the Kim Jee-woons and the Park Chan-wooks of the filmic world” but he blends them together with African history and African lore to create something very likely to be unlike anything you’ve seen before. This is the sort of movie that gets you excited about sharing it with other people. So we are excited to share this Saloum clip with you, and trust us when we say… check it out on Shudder this week if you haven’t already. Add it to your weekend watch list.
What is going on here? We won’t spoil the mysteries of the town or the movie. But you should definitely go find out for yourself when Saloum hits Shudder on September 8. In the meantime, you can check out our exclusive interview with writer/director Jean Luc Herbulot.
