In the name of Christ, a look back at a classic of African cinema

Work of the Ivorian director Roger Gnoan M’Bala, who passed through the French cinema conservatory from 1966-1968, it was in 1993 that Au nom du Christ was released, a fiction that satirizes irrational beliefs close to sectism and its harmful consequences. on a post-independence African society which is still in a frantic quest for religious identity, between Christian faith and African occult practices.

A notorious alcoholic discredited by his entire community, Gnamien Ato is a vulgar, crazy-looking swineherd who leads a most ordinary existence in Bali-Ahuekro, a small village located in West Africa.

Ignored by all the villagers of whom he cares very little in return, he is only interested in his glasses of alcohol and his walks in the village and in the surrounding forests.

One day while he was walking drunk near the river, he narrowly missed drowning and managed to get out of the water. At this precise moment a revelation comes to him, that of a “child of God” who would have chosen him among all to save his people.

It does not take more to make him a new man, the cousin of Christ he thinks, and is now called Magloire 1er. Under the skeptical gaze of the villagers, he manages to restore reason to the madwoman of the village whom he immediately hastens to marry. The dazzled spectators, this act earned him many disciples who rallied to the cause, seeing in him the prophet who had come to bring grace and blessing to them.

But faith, if it can move mountains, cannot make a man other than what he is, a man. Between petty trickery and extreme religious convictions, fate gets the better of him when his beliefs push him to be crucified like Christ, by the hands of his disciples on his own recommendation.

The film was warmly received by critics, cementing Roger Gnoan M’Bala’s position among the greatest directors of his time. Today, In the name of Christ is a classic of African cinema that has won many awards:

Fespaco 1993: Grand Prize, French Cooperation Prize for Cinema 1993, Locarno Film Festival 1993: Special Youth Prize, Perugia 1994: Grand Prize, Milan 1994: Special Jury Prize, Vues d’Afrique Montreal 1994: Grand Prize, Durban International Film Festival 2002 and Black Movie (Geneva) 2002.