Gamboa & Gamboa

Forest dwellers pound drums upholding rituals while urbanites cry "Progress!" More plunder the land's riches but newly defiant ones shout back.

In Mozambique, Izidine, a young police inspector, is called to investigate the murder of Vasto Excelêncio, the director of a nursing home built within the walls of an old colonial slave fortress. He is shocked when all the elderly residents, as well as the head nurse, Marta, confess to the murder. Each one has motive, given Excelêncio’s abusive behavior. With only a week to solve the case, the detective slowly unravels truths about the murder, Mozambique's colonial past, and himself.

Zézé Gamboa's sardonic historical drama follows a good-hearted, apolitical con man who, on the eve of Angolan independence in the mid-1970s, pulls off a massive swindle at the expense of the Portuguese colonial administration — and soon after finds himself hailed as a hero of the national liberation struggle.

A 20-year veteran of the Angolan civil war returns to the capital city of Luanda where he faces the challenges of assimilation and survival.