Ique Langa on Returning “O Profeta” to Mozambique

The days when internationally decorated African filmmakers and films struggled to get national and continental attention and distribution are slowly going extinct. From Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki, C.J Obasi’s Mami Wata, Baloji’s Omen (Augure), Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, Mohamed Kordofani’s Goodbye Julia, Zoey Martison’s The Fisherman, Akinola Davies’s My Father’s Shadow, and others, the physical and structural hurdles are waning. This makes the national premiere of Ique Langa’s O Profeta (The Prophet), after its 2024 Venice’s Final Cut screening, world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and others, especially important. 

The film which carries the voices, landscapes, and spiritual weight of Mozambique has screened across the world. Now, it’s returned to Mozambique for a national premiere and theatrical distribution. “Maputo is my home and nothing feels like home. To screen it there, especially at NuMetro, felt completely unreal and special. The film was overwhelmingly well received by the audience,” Langa said of the screening. After the Nu Metro release, the director would love for the film to travel across Mozambique and eventually return again to Manjacaze. The challenge is the limited commercial cinemas in Mozambique. But he isn’t fazed by this as there’s an intention to find alternate ways of bringing the film to people. “For me, that is part of the life I want the film to have. It can travel internationally, but it should also travel through Mozambique and reach people who might never have access to these festival spaces or even to a commercial cinema. Days before the national screening, Culture Custodian spoke with Langa about his film, its international journey, capitalism, artistic integrity, and why building a national and continental audience for African films matters. 

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

O Profeta and Chapa 100 which you are working on returns you to your ancestral and physical home in terms of subject matter, setting, and casting choices. Where does this begin for you? 

O Profeta was shot in Manjacaze, the village where my father is from. My whole life, whenever I wasn’t in Maputo, where I grew up, Manjacaze was the other place I knew. I spent so much time there that making the film never really felt like a return. It felt more like showing a part of myself, both physically and spiritually. When it came to casting, the village itself was the first thing to be cast. I would say that every location in the film was treated almost like an actor, because each one had so much to say about the characters and the world they inhabit. The same happened with the non-professional actors in O Profeta. They brought parts of themselves and that world into the film, which pushed me to let go and, at times, reshape the writing according to what they brought to each scene. With Chapa 100, that relationship shifts to Maputo, the city where I grew up. In a way, these two films connect to the two places that have shaped most of my life.

This is also something the subject matter and the process of making these films keep teaching me. I discover as much about myself as I do about the places and people I am filming. There is a lot of letting go involved, and of learning to really see what is in front of me. 

In your The Hollywood Reporter interview, you likened Pastor Hélder,’s struggle to yours. Beyond its spiritual and religious undertone, is Hélder’s struggle and doubt also reflective of the desire for more success, and material benefits conditioned by capitalism? 

One of the contradictions of being a prophet is everything that comes with it. It is not only about the divine, but also about the desires of the flesh. In my film, the prophet is often more carnal than spiritual, and unfortunately for him, the things that could connect him most deeply to the divine are the ones right in front of him, yet he fails to see them. He becomes consumed by doubt, but also by the feeling that he has to become somebody. That pressure is clearly shaped by capitalism, by the idea that success has to be visible, measurable, and material. But in Mozambique, this cannot be separated from colonialism and the systems of value it left behind. Christianity itself arrived entangled with colonial power, and even today inherited ideas around progress, status, respectability, and what it means to have “made it” continue to shape how people see themselves.

So there is a contradiction in wanting to have more while following a spiritual path that promises another kind of richness, one that supposedly comes from letting go and placing your trust in the divine. That spiritual path exists in direct tension with capitalism, while also carrying the historical weight of colonialism, and at times religion has both resisted and benefited from those systems. In this sense, the pastor is not necessarily a victim of capitalism or colonialism, but rather someone trying to find meaning inside systems that have already defined what success, power, and even salvation are supposed to look like. He keeps moving further into a place he never expected to reach, until he no longer knows where to go next or how to return to safety. In the end, he is simply lost.

Capitalism enforces a binary: be rich or poor. Thus, as a society, we are conditioned into this binary with our worth tied to our finances and upward mobility. Looking at Hélder’s trajectory and his spiritual doubt and frustration, is his struggle less about a loss of belief in God and more about the crushing realization that the metrics of success leave very little room for human vulnerability and genuine faith?

I think that is one possible way of reading Hélder, but I would be careful about defining his struggle entirely through that lens. I don’t necessarily see him as someone who has come to the realization that capitalism has corrupted his faith, or even as someone who has simply lost his belief in God. I am more interested in showing the contradictions he lives within than taking a position on what they mean. Hélder himself doesn’t fully understand what is happening to him. He wants to be closer to the divine, but he also wants recognition, success, material comfort, and the feeling that he is becoming somebody. Capitalism is certainly present in that desire, particularly in the idea that success must be visible and that your value can be measured by what you have or how others perceive you. In Mozambique, I think that also exists within a longer history of colonialism and the systems of value it left behind.

But there is another force acting on Hélder that he understands even less. He belongs to a world in which African spirituality and traditional beliefs are present whether he consciously accepts them or not. In his case, he eventually encounters what we would call feitiçaria, and enters a spiritual world that his Christian faith has taught him to reject, but which is nevertheless part of the cultural and spiritual reality surrounding him. What interests me is that Hélder is willing to corrupt himself to maintain the image of who he believes he should be. And in that sense, he becomes a mirror of the society around him. Corruption does not only have to mean stealing public money or committing an obvious crime. There are smaller forms of corruption that can slowly become normalized, where we compromise ourselves, our beliefs or other people in order to survive, advance, maintain appearances, or obtain what we think we deserve. When that happens repeatedly enough, a certain kind of corruption can almost become part of the culture.

So I don’t see Hélder simply as a victim of capitalism, colonialism, religion or traditional belief. All of these forces are present around him and, in different ways, inside him. The film observes as he tries to navigate them without completely understanding what is pulling him in each direction. The further he goes, the more willing he becomes to compromise himself, until eventually he reaches a place where he no longer knows how to move forward or return to where he started. He is lost.

Hélder’s anxiety seems heavily tied to the pressure of building an impactful ministry. This desire mirrors the realities of African filmmakers, who are often compelled to dilute or commodify their deeply personal, cultural stories to secure international funding and distribution. Thinking about this, to what extent do you think Hélder’s dilemma samples that of these internationally ambitious African filmmakers? And what do you make of their desire and that external pressure placed on them by funders and distributors?

When I was making O Profeta, my goal was simply to make the best film I could with the resources and the people around me. The film was made with the heart of the village of Manjacaze. There was one day when more than a hundred people showed up to be part of the shoot. We kept filming past midnight, and these were people who had never been on a film set before, yet they gave everything they had in every take. At one point, I wanted to wrap because it was so late, and they were the ones telling me not to stop until I had the shot I wanted. That spirit really stayed with me.

When O Profeta first premiered in Rotterdam, we went out for a crew dinner to celebrate. Friends and family were there, and we were all sitting around this long table. I  looked at everyone and thought of how special it was to have brought all these people together. People who are creative, kind, hardworking, dedicated, and incredibly talented. I wanted to do it again, but in better conditions, where I could provide better working conditions for everyone and hopefully make an even better film. At that moment, I wondered if that might be what success feels like to me. To bring people together around something we believe is meaningful, something that comes from our hearts, and to be able to share that experience with one another.

That is also why the comparison with Hélder is difficult for me to answer too definitively. I understand the connection between ambition, external pressure, and the desire to become more successful, but I am still learning how those pressures operate in my own life and career. O Profeta was made before I had much understanding of international markets, funding structures or distribution systems. I was simply trying to tell a story I felt I could not live without telling. Its journey has since opened doors I never expected, including the possibility of developing Chapa 100 from a very different starting point, already within international markets and with more resources and opportunities around it.

So now I am entering that process with more awareness and a lot of openness. I want to keep learning to navigate those systems without letting them dictate what the film should be. With Chapa 100, my goal is still to make the best film I can, to create better conditions for the people making it with me, and above all to make sure that whatever we create still comes from the heart.

The film brilliantly tackles the proliferation of churches and the rise of prophets offering quick fixes to desperate and vulnerable people. Looking at this boom in religious centers across the continent, do you see it as a reflection of an inherently deep, genuine African spirituality, or is it a direct symptom of systemic failure where citizens are forced to seek from a divine source when the government has failed to provide infrastructure, jobs, and security?

When I finished writing the script and we started location scouting, I noticed that almost every time I returned to Manjacaze, there was a new church. At one point, some were literally next to each other. I thought it was preposterous, and when you look at that alongside unemployment, weak infrastructure, limited education, and healthcare, I do think there is a correlation. Research in Mozambique has also linked the growth of these churches to social and economic insecurity, and to people seeking prosperity, healing, and solutions in the present. But I don’t think African spirituality can be reduced to systemic failure. Our relationship with ancestors, spirits, healing and the invisible world is much older than these crises. These newer religious movements enter a society that is already deeply spiritual, and they often speak through ideas and cosmologies that people already understand. 

So for me, the proliferation of churches sits somewhere between those two things: a genuine spiritual culture and a society where many people are looking for answers that institutions are not giving them. When the state cannot tell you when your life will improve, a prophet can tell you that it can improve tomorrow. That tension is really at the heart of O Profeta. I wasn’t interested in simply saying that prophets are frauds and believers are victims. I was more interested in asking what conditions make the prophet possible in the first place, and what he provides emotionally, spiritually, and materially that other parts of society may have failed to provide.

Your film exposes the vulnerability and uncertainty that many Africans experience. Do you believe these religious centers are filling a spiritual void, or are they functioning as an alternative system where hope, community, survival, and spiritual loyalty collapses into one?

I think it is both. There is a spiritual need, but a church can also become a home. It can create community, belonging, discipline, care, and a space where people feel seen and supported. And I think a responsible pastor can almost be a doctor for the soul. Someone who listens, guides people through difficult moments, gives them hope, and helps hold a community together. That is a real gift, and I don’t want the film to dismiss that. What connected me personally to the film was the more fragile side of that vocation: what happens when the heart of someone who genuinely wants to guide others becomes corrupted by the system around him, but also by his own fears, ambitions, and sense of being lost. That contradiction was very important to me. He can be seen as a prophet by the people around him, but he is still a human being. He can carry other people’s hopes while not knowing what to do with his own life. For me, the film lives inside that tension, between vocation and weakness, faith and survival, spiritual responsibility and human vulnerability.

There seems to be a bit of uncertainty if the film resists being either a straightforward critique of religion or a defense of the mystical. There’s a tendency to interpret this as the quotidian dilemma of a logic driven or irreligious African who still practices, for communal reasons, religious activities.  For you, how do you articulate this? 

My opinion about whether the film is a critique of religion or a defense of the mystical is almost irrelevant. The moment I define it too clearly, I feel I am already telling the audience how they should experience the film, and I don’t want to do that. I would rather leave enough ambiguity for people to bring their own relationship with faith, spirituality, doubt, and community into it. I’m interested in the contradiction itself. A church can be a home, a place of support and community, and a responsible pastor can almost function like a doctor for the soul. That can be a genuine gift. But I’m also interested in what happens when someone with that vocation becomes corrupted by a system, by power, or simply by his own sense of being lost. He can be seen as a prophet and still be completely human, vulnerable, and fallible. So I don’t want to resolve that tension for the audience. I want the film to hold both things at once.

You worked with a non-professional, local cast from Manjacaze. What sort of institutional support or system exists for actors and filmmakers in Mozambique? And, for an outsider, how would you describe and contextualize the film industry in Mozambique?

There isn’t really a strong film industry in Mozambique yet. There are filmmakers, actors, and technicians, but very little consistent support or infrastructure. Most of us are figuring things out project by project and finding ways to make the films happen. With O Profeta, using non-professional actors was also very intentional, as I wanted people from Manjacaze who already understood that world, the language, the gestures, and the way people speak and move. I wasn’t looking for polished performances. I wanted presence and truth.

It’s often rare to see African films at festival circuits have national and theatrical distribution until recently. What are your thoughts around this?

It’s preposterous how an African film can travel around the world, screen at major festivals, receive international attention, and still be difficult to watch in the country where it was made. Werner Herzog once described cinema as “the art of the illiterate,” and I really love that idea because cinema, at its best, can belong to everyone. You don’t need a certain education or background to be moved by an image, a face, a sound, a story. So I think the challenge now is also an opportunity. In Mozambique we have very few commercial cinemas left, but that doesn’t mean there is no audience. It means we have to be more creative about how films reach people. Travelling screenings, cultural centres, schools, community spaces, these can also be part of what distribution means.

Festivals are important because they help films travel and open doors, but I think the most beautiful thing is when that international journey brings the film back home stronger. The goal is not only for African films to travel abroad, but also to circulate across Africa too, and to reach the people whose lives, languages, and realities are inside them.

Chapa 100, you have said, is inspired by your childhood society. What more can be said about the film in terms of subject matter, production, and distribution plans? 

Chapa 100 comes from growing up in Maputo and being surrounded by chapas every day. They are part of the city’s rhythm, and inside one chapa you can see so many different lives crossing paths. At the centre of the film is an elderly flower seller who falls in love with an older vegetable seller. From there, the story opens into something about love, aging, memory, loss, and the spiritual ways we remain connected to people. I’m developing the film with Lara Sousa as producer and Sousa Domingos as associate producer. Sousa produced O Profeta, so we already went through that whole journey together, and there is a lot of trust between us. Lara is from the same generation of Mozambican filmmakers as us, but she brings much more experience working internationally and building co-productions, which is very important for the scale of this film. Mostafa El Kashef is also attached as cinematographer, and I’m really excited about the visual language we will build together.

The project has also grown through places like Atlas Workshops, CineMart, Locarno Open Doors, and MacDowell. Those spaces have helped us develop the film, challenge it, and build the right partnerships around it. Production-wise, it is more ambitious than O Profeta, and that is exciting because it gives us the chance to build stronger conditions for the cast and crew while keeping the film intimate and close to the people and the city. With distribution, the ambition is also bigger. I would love for the film to travel internationally, reach major festivals, and at the same time have a strong life in Mozambique and across Africa. For me, those journeys belong together.