Director: Jean Luc Herbulot
A botched extraction job strands three mercenaries in a corner of Senegal where the usual rules of a crime thriller stop applying — that's the premise driving Saloum, the 2023 genre feature from Jean Luc Herbulot.
What is Saloum about?
The story opens mid-coup, with a trio of hardened operators smuggling a wanted druglord out of Guinea-Bissau by light aircraft. Engine trouble forces them down in the Sine-Saloum delta, a coastal region steeped in local legend, where they pose as travelers at a remote eco-lodge while they wait to refuel. What starts as a tense waiting game between the mercenaries, a deaf lodge worker, and a police detective closing in on their trail gradually tips into something the group is far less equipped to handle, as the delta's reputation for the uncanny turns out to be more than folklore. Herbulot spends the first half building a lean crime plot before pulling the genre floor out from under it.
Cast & crew
Yann Gael anchors the film as the crew's calculating leader, with Roger Felmont Sallah and Evelyne Ily Juhen as his fellow mercenaries, alongside Bruno Henry, Mentor Ba, Marielle Salmier, Babacar Oualy, and Ndiaga Mbow filling out the lodge and the pursuing investigation.
Context & significance
Produced across France, Senegal, and the United States, Saloum was shot largely on location in the Sine-Saloum delta itself, giving the film's back half a grounded, specific sense of place rather than a generic backdrop. Herbulot, working with the Congolese production banner Fiction Factory, built the project around West African folklore and history rather than importing a familiar genre setting wholesale, which is part of why the film traveled well on the festival circuit after its 2021 debut and 2023 wider release.
Where & how to watch
Saloum streams on K-Time with a free account login, dubbed and subtitled in Persian so the delta's dialogue and atmosphere come through clearly for Farsi-speaking viewers. The platform's Farsi interface is built for easy browsing across the diaspora.