Sambizanga is a passionate dramatisation of a pivotal moment in Angola’s fight for freedom – and a riveting neorealist testimony to the nation’s anticolonialist struggle.

Adapted by director Sarah Maldoror from a book by José Luandino Vieira, and set in the lead-up to the start of the Angolan War of Independence, Sambizanga was the one of the first features shot in Africa by a woman of African descent – but went unseen in Angola until the nation achieved independence from Portugal in 1975.

The restoration of this watershed 1972 film was held up by a battle for ownership between the licence holder and Maldoror’s family. However, it eventually came about through the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) and UNESCO in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna, to help locate, restore and disseminate African cinema. We’re delighted to screen it at the ICA as part of the season Women’s Stories from the Global South (& To Whom They Belong)