Mortu Nega (Those Whom Death Refused) (1988) was Bissau-Guinean filmmaker Flora Gomes’ first feature film, set within Guinea-Bissau’s struggle against Portuguese rule. It is centred on a spirited protagonist, Diminga, and her journey to find her husband, Sako. It is a polyvocal story — on the complexities of a nation-state, the role of women in African liberation struggles, and the various notions of ‘struggle’. Within this thematic framework, the film also has a highly visible ‘ecopoetic’ strand — incorporating an ecological and environmental perspective that comments on colonial ecological violence, and how this violence compounds strife in times of natural weather patterns like droughts. The film further comments on the utilisation on how this ecological violence is resisted through ‘nature’ itself — refuge is sought under forest canopies, supplies are made from local fauna, and romantic reconnection is intrinsically tied to the environmental.

Mortu Nega opens with the rural. We are introduced to a group of guerilla soldiers and civilians. The soldiers clad in dusty brown fatigues that blend into the flora, the civilians donning a loud mismatch of everyday clothing. We are introduced to the protagonist, Diminga, who with her civilian entourage carry supplies and weapons for the fighters, balanced on their heads, and march in single file. The sparse drumbeat soundtrack accompanying their march in this open expanse is interrupted by gunfire from a helicopter, menacingly hovering over at the top of the frame. The helicopter is ultimately kept at bay, but shortly after a young boy in the group is killed — stepping on an undetected mine.

This opening sequence introduces the landscape as an integral character in the narrative, and it is helpful here to introduce Amílcar Cabral, who as leader of PAIGC catalysed liberatory theory into revolutionary, agile praxis throughout Guinea-Bissau. Most relevant, however, is his training as an agronomist and his sustained argument that the regeneration of soils, and consequently the environment, is intertwined with the liberation struggle. He argued that the soil “has a dynamic relation to human social structures,” and is not simply a “static ‘ground’ subjected to human agency.” Mortu Nega presents the dichotomy of the environment as resistance and violence. There are close-up shots of the civilians sitting on the ground, deft hands filling the frame, as they tie mortar shells and headgear with palm leaves — this flora playing a direct role in armed resistance. 

With the subsequent helicopter attack and mine explosion in the open plains, there is an evident portrayal of the flatness of the land and absence of a forest canopy as menacing. Diminga and a friend, Lebeth, shelter under long grass, and in their fear-ridden conversation they seem hopelessly exposed — it is in this landscape where Portuguese helicopters have visibility. This geographical characteristic of Guinea-Bissau was highlighted by Cabral, who recognised that the flatness of the terrain was a limitation and necessitated an alternative approach to guerilla warfare suited for a non-mountainous region.  

The lovers are reunited about half an hour into the film, and the nature of their reconnection foreshadows how the film aligns their romantic connection with environmental visuality.  In a deeply intimate scene, Diminga and Sako converse, close-ups of their smiling faces staged by the dry soil of a trench. This man-made intrusion on the landscape is depicted not as a claustrophobic structure of warfare, but as a cosy cove that facilitates tender emotional expression.

The visuality of the environment then continues to play a multifaceted role. It functions as a method of showcasing the subtle fracturing of Diminga and Sako’s reconnection. Sako has been injured, and underneath the night sky in the guerilla fighters’ forest enclave, they have a conversation, accompanied by the sonorous sound of crickets. Sako is clearly distressed, and Diminga is unsure how to help him. The composition of this scene depicts this disconnect. They are divided by a colossal log, detachedly embracing each other over it with one hand each, this natural structure functioning as a metaphorical barrier as Sako broods and laments over his wife not understanding him. The violent struggle, in addition to injuring his leg, is evidently adversely affecting his mental state. 

In a subsequent scene, the camera slowly tilts downward from a forest canopy, and pans to seated guerilla fighters greasing their weapons on improvised palm-leaf mats. One fighter, Estin, brings more oil for greasing, his comrades incredulous at how he was able to procure so much. It is a subtle suggestion of Estin’s future characterisation as a figure involved in self-seeking resource exploitation.

Diminga and Sako then separate — Sako has departed with the guerilla fighters for another campaign. Diminga decides to return to her village with Lebeth, and their journey, depicted with wide shots of the pair framed and backdropped by dry, dusty trees and even drier sand, is the first time the film outrightly depicts the fact that the liberation war is being fought amidst a severe drought, causing the desiccation of the natural landscape. As the pair near the village, water makes its first appearance in the film as a visual, physical, and symbolic counterpoint to the parched landscape through two lingering shots. One wide shot  — a water fountain embedded in a monument centred on the frame —with the women approaching it in the background. The second a close-up of the tap as the pair take turns taking a long drink.

Diminga and Lebeth arrive at the village in jubilant fashion, having disseminated the news that the war is over. Work still has to be done, and here the film introduces another ecological dynamic — that of agricultural labour to produce food, and within this labour, the gendered dynamics at play. In the village, it is the women who are performing the crucial work of feeding the community. In a particularly poignant exchange, two women talk with each other, conversing convivially as they ground spices with pestles and sort rice. Diminga sits, cooking, centred but in the frame’s background. The women talk about Diminga’s departure to the front lines, good-naturedly questioning if Diminga would be able to remember how to tend to her field — one of them telling Diminga that she “left her scythe for a gun”. Diminga quickly retorts that “they each have their uses.” It is a short, friendly confrontation, but it is a powerful representation of Gomes’ desire to situate these two forms of labour — shooting colonial forces with guns and cultivating crops — as equal and relational. 

In another scene, a teacher who has been providing literary and ideological lessons to the village finds his way to Diminga’s field, looking to help her tend to it. He proceeds to cut down the grains using a scythe and is promptly laughed at for his poor technique and is told to watch another woman to learn how to do it properly. Once again, Mortu Nega portrays women as having agency and having a vital role to play in repairing the health of a colonised land and its people. 

Sako finds his way back to the village, and reunites again with Diminga. The welcome is heralded with a ritual — no doubt taking an increased significance amidst the environmental conditions — of pouring water over his hands from a gourd and offering him a drink from it. The camera focuses on the faces of the pair, Diminga lovingly watching her husband as he drinks.  The drought continues to act as a narrative device — dampening the euphoria following the climax of the conflict. The camera follows a vulture as it flies from a tree branch, across a cloudless sky, to its destination on dried-up soil around a committee gathered underneath the skinny trunk of a solitary tree

The wells have almost dried up, and Lebeth wants to go home. As Diminga futilely waters cracking soil with muddy water, Sakoresolutely remarks that “we should not let the drought separate us”. Climactic developments are straining psychological states and communal relations. This natural climactic cycle is occurring in a context of a village, and a country, trying to chart a path forward after years of existing as a peasant agrarian economy with significant food insecurity due to colonial economic policies.  The colonial government itself committed calculated ecological violence by bombing rice fields, and deporting and assassinating workers who tended to them.  

Prior to Lebeth and Sako’s conversation, the political party has brought rice, oil, and other goods to the village. In liberated areas the PAIGC has organised agricultural production, educated farm workers, and opened collective stores to supply supplies in exchange for agricultural produce.  In Mortu Nega, the uglier realities of a resource-starved postcolonial context are portrayed. It is not long before a woman has hoarded these supplies and set up shop outside her home, selling oil, sugar and other wares at exorbitant prices. The exploitation of natural resources for non-collective, non-liberatory purposes is then further alluded to in the film’s first foray into urban Guinea-Bissau. 

Sako travels to the city with Diminga to seek medical treatment. At the hospital, he asks Diminga to meet his friend who works at the port who might be able to assist him. Upon Diminga’s arrival at the port, we see that the friend is the guerilla fighter Estin, not the unkempt figure from the battlefield, but a clean-shaven bureaucrat. Estin pretends not to know Sako and dismisses Diminga. What is apparent is a sense of stagnation. A group of men listlessly sit on a railing, and an assortment of boats —both rudimental wooden boats and sophisticated vessels — are aimlessly anchored on the sandy riverbank. The port, so crucial to  growing national economies, has been captured by neo-colonialists in the form of Estin and people of his ilk. 

Back at the village, Diminga has a disconcerting dream. Soundtracked by a minimal, ominous drumbeat, Diminga’s dreams are a montage of drought-ridden soil, dead trees, torched houses, animal skeletons, colonial helicopters, and fleeing villagers. The next day, she informs the village women of her nightmare, and they suggest a ceremony to call the dead. The ceremony, invoking the ancestral spirit of ‘Djon Gago’ — a deity indigenous to the Balanta ethnic group — involves the participation of outsiders to the village. They arrive by boat with great fanfare, chanting, singing, and dancing as they step onto dry land. The ceremony begins, led by Diminga, and a lively montage follows, composed of dancing crowds, enthusiastic drummers, and close-ups of a sweating Diminga. 

She finally calls out to the ancestral spirit, querying what the deity desires, her utterances laced with environmental imagery as she says how she has watered the palm, kapok and baobab trees that offer shade to the ancestors. In her incantation there is the invocation of a layered, reciprocal relationship that the natural environment has with the human both living and dead. 

In the concluding sequence, the camera pans from a sleeping Sako to a pensive Diminga, sitting upright on the bed and backdropped by the textured mud-brick walls of their home. We hear a rhythmic rattle that makes her go outside — rainfall, finally. Diminga stands outside their home by the window, smiling off-screen at the rain. Sako then awakes and rests himself on the window ledge from the inside. They both look at the rain, at each other, and smile. The view they see is that of jubilant children dancing as the rain wets the dry soil, the camera panning to reveal merry kinetic silhouettes splashing water, encased by the generous canopy of large trees. The ecological parable is complete — an ode, perhaps, to a prosperous future.