Mortu Nega, the first feature film by Flora Gomes, was partly shot very close to the Malafo village where some of the participants in the production still live today. Mortu Nega tells the story of one woman’s journey from January 1973, during the last months of the liberation war against the Portuguese colonialists, till the consolidation of an independent Guinea-Bissau in 1974 and 1975. This small West African nation, with its valiant struggle and eventual triumph over 500 years of Portuguese rule, attracted international support and heralded the last anti-colonial wave that culminated in the defeat of apartheid in 1994. The charismatic leader of the revolution, the agronomist Amilcar Cabral, was assassinated on the eve of victory in January 1973. The Mortu Nega is the first feature film from independent Guinea-Bissau, it had its world premiere at the Venice Festival on 29th August 1988.