Film still of Soleil Ô (Oh, Sun) © RR
1969: Soleil Ô sheds light on immigrants in France
Originally, Soleil Ô (Oh Sun!) was a song chanted by the Africans who were taken as slave labour to the West Indies. Med Hondo has made it into a film. Born in Mauritania, settled in France, in 1969 he made a fictional film that attacks neocolonialism by recounting the living conditions of immigrant workers in France. They go there for a better life, but once they have arrived, they are faced with poverty, humiliation and racism.
Med Hondo attacks colonialism. Soleil Ô, in the words of the filmmaker, retraces “10 years of Gaullism seen through the eyes of an African in Paris”. However, it is not limited to the condition of immigrants in France. He also refers to the African networks, in particular the complicity of the upper middle class and those in power in certain states. On its release, Soleil Ô was banned in several countries.
Neither intellectual, nor sophisticated. This is how Med Hondo describes his film: "It often happens that the people who understand the film the best are illiterate. When it was released in Algeria, a country where the audience could completely identify with the film, it was the proletariat that explained it to the intellectuals."
The French are very familiar with the voice of Med Hondo, even if they are not aware of it. A far cry from the engaged film director, Med Hondo is the actor who did the French voice-over for Eddie Murphy in close to thirty films, from Doctor Doolittle to Beverly Hills Cop. Well known in the industry, he has been called to do voice-over for a hundred films, notably for Morgan Freeman, characters in Shrek and Rafiki in The Lion King.
A screening by The Film Foundation. Restored by Cineteca di Bologna in the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in collaboration with Med Hondo. Restoration financed by the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.
