Soleil Ô
Director Med Hondo had such a bad experience immigrating to France from his home country of Mauritania that he made one of the greatest films of all time just to make sure France knew. It is the mother of all .5-star Yelp reviews. Imagine if someone came to your house to try brunch for the first time, and then later, you find out that they’re making world-class art as a rallying cry to end the very concept of brunch.
Oh, Sun (Soleil Ô, 1970) follows an unnamed immigrant (Robert Liensol) from Africa who arrives in France hoping for opportunity and a better life. Hope slowly erodes as reality sets in. He is met with racism, exploitation, and the harsh indifference of a system designed to keep people like him at the margins. This may sound like a drag to watch, but it isn’t! Hondo’s understanding of telling a basic and compelling story (journey to a strange land) is majorly amplified by his style and (as Scorsese puts it) “invention of a cinematic language.”
The most obvious clue that you’re watching a film ahead of its time will be this “cinematic language.” It has a gritty, cinéma vérité look that feels more like watching a real-life documentary than a piece of fiction. There’s a sharpness to the imagery, but it’s not polished—it’s meant to feel rough and jagged, like the life the protagonist leads. This gritty look will be subverted with surrealist scenes and subversively straightforward melodramatic scenes between characters. The film doesn’t solely focus on the immigrant’s struggle; we jump from set piece to set piece. In one sequence, we see troops indoctrinated into the church, marching for Christianity, only to encounter unrest and conveniently flip their crosses into perfect swords and fight their way through. The people they’re fighting their way through? Each other.
A fragmented, episodic structure works to mirror the experience of dislocation—jumping between moments of humiliation, isolation, and exploitation. In one sequence, the protagonist/immigrant tries to find work, only to be turned away repeatedly and with various scowls. In another, he walks the streets aimlessly, invisible in a sea of people. This isn’t the Paris of romantic clichés. It’s the Paris that doesn’t give a damn if you’re crushed underfoot. It’s a place of cold stares and closed doors. The standout moment for me—and perhaps the most harrowing—is a surreal scene where the protagonist walks into a church, and the statues of white saints begin to come alive, chanting and staring him down with cold, judgmental eyes. It’s a moment of spiritual rejection, a metaphor for the impossible task of assimilating into a society that wants nothing to do with you, despite trying to assimilate you in the first place. Scenes like these elevate Oh, Sun beyond the typical social-realist fare, tipping it into the realm of allegory.
The film makes great use of music, blending African rhythms with more traditional French styles to underscore the cultural clash. The soundtrack swells at moments of emotional tension, offering a release when words can’t. This isn’t just a film about being displaced geographically; it’s about being displaced culturally, spiritually, and existentially.
The movie goes out of its way to illustrate that the primary injustice in the modern world isn’t race or skin color: it’s class. in one scene, a portly white man sitting at the bar observes all of the Africans in the building as “pouring in” to the country and “not too bright.” By the end of a song-filled and entertaining evening, courtesy of Black bar patrons, the white working stiff has completely changed his tune: “They’re nice people. It’s the truth, and that’s a fact.” It’s hard not to think of today’s political landscape when watching Oh, Sun. The film feels like a prophecy—the lower class (many of whom are immigrants) still face the same struggles and still fight for dignity in societies that refuse to acknowledge their humanity. It’s tragic how relevant this film remains. It reminds me of an interview Bong Joon-Ho did back when he was making the rounds for Parasite (2019) where he said:
When directing the movie, I tried to express a sentiment specific to the Korean culture, and I thought that it was full of Koreanness, if seen from an outsider’s perspective, but upon screening the film after completion, all the responses from different audiences were pretty much the same, which made me realize that the topic was universal, in fact. Essentially we all live in the same country, called capitalism…
Watching Soleil Ô, you might feel like you’re from the same country as Med Hondo.
Soleil Ô
Written and Directed by Med Hondo
1970
103 minutes
French
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Streaming on the Criterion Channel
You’ll like this if you like: Parasite (2019), Black Girl (1966),
All dialogue is commerce.