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Based on a traditional African tale. A king has the habit whilst walking in disguise on the streets of his kingdom to listen to the wishes of his own people. One day he overhears two brothers daydreaming out loud about marrying the king's daughters, even if that meant being beheaded one year later. The weddings take place and one of the brother is decapitated one year later. The other one escapes execution at his wife's insistence. On a long journey full of surprising incidents, our hero himself becomes king of a village with wives and subjects. However, his earlier promise haunts him, and in order to save his family he accepts to be sacrificed.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
FR

After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.

In the early 1920s, Georges Laffont, traumatized by the horrific trench warfare, decides to leave his life behind and travel to West Africa. In the vast territories of Upper Volta he - with the help of Diofo, artist and also survivor of the Great War - try to recruit the villagers as labor for plantations in Ghana. But his adventure leads him to a dead-end, and he comes back to Paris desperate to find his place in the world.