Father's Garden

Not, sadly, as fine as Laplaine’s earlier ‘Macadam Tribu’, but still a very effective noir drama in which a honeymooning French couple arrive in Senegal – where the groom spent his colonial childhood – and, after their taxi knocks over a child in a township would up by election fever, find themselves trapped in a nightmare of spiralling violence. The film has much to say about the volatile relationship between Africans and their former (and even, unwittingly, current?) oppressors, and couches its insights within a reasonably gripping thriller format. Though a bit rough, the digital camerawork lends the proceedings a documentary feel.