Hollow City

A rare import from Angola's tiny film industry, this harrowing and memorable drama follows the journey of an 11-year-old named N'dala (the extraordinary nonprofessional child actor Roldan Pinto João), who is orphaned when his family is massacred in a tribal village during a civil war. Flown to the capital city of Luanda under the care of a missionary nun, N'dala breaks away from her supervision to explore the vast and teeming metropolis and falls in with a group of schoolchildren, an elderly fisherman, and, unfortunately, the criminal element. Filmmaker Maria João Ganga (one of Africa's relatively few female directors) is working on the proverbial shoestring budget, yet she creates a gritty neorealist odyssey that brilliantly taps into universal themes of street urchins in dangerous urban territories (placing it in the company of movies such as Pixote, Salaam Bombay!, or the oft-filmed Oliver Twist). At the same time, Hollow City is distinctly Angolan, with its uneasy balance between everyday normalcy and a paralyzing civil war festering around the ebb and flow of Luanda's human traffic. Highly recommended. (P. Hall)