# Queimada
**Queimada**, released in English-speaking markets as **Burn!**, is a 1969 political drama directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, produced by Alberto Grimaldi, and starring [Marlon Brando](https://www.edgepedia.org/marlon-brando) as a British agent who instigates, and then destroys, a slave revolution on a fictional Caribbean island.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada) A French-Italian production shot in English, it followed Pontecorvo's *The Battle of Algiers* (1966) and extended that film's third-world politics into a colonial allegory with neo-imperialist themes.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / year | Gillo Pontecorvo (1919–2006), 1969; France and Italy[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada) |
| Principal cast | Marlon Brando (Sir William Walker), Evaristo Márquez (José Dolores), Renato Salvatori (Teddy Sanchez, the governor)[2](https://www.archiviodelcinemaitaliano.it/index.php/scheda.html?codice=AG2669) |
| Key crew | Screenplay Franco Solinas and Giorgio Arlorio; music Ennio Morricone; cinematography Giuseppe Ruzzolini and Marcello Gatti; editing Mario Morra[2](https://www.archiviodelcinemaitaliano.it/index.php/scheda.html?codice=AG2669) |
| Running times | Complete version 132 minutes; the American release was cut by about 20 minutes and retitled *Burn!*[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada) • [3](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2004/08/queimada/) |
| Setting | The fictional Caribbean island of Queimada, in the 1840s and the decade following[4](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1970/11/07/the-current-cinema-21) |
| Spanish release | 21 January 1971; 1,229,189 spectators and €219,256.22 in receipts recorded by the ICAA[5](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=771050) |
| Critical standing | Metascore of 72 on Metacritic's re-release aggregation; Edward Said called *The Battle of Algiers* and *Burn!* "the two greatest political films ever made"[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/burn%21/critic-reviews/) • [7](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/the-hour-of-the-birth-of-death/108013.article) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The story is set on Queimada, an imaginary Antilles sugar island whose original inhabitants were destroyed and replaced by enslaved Africans.[8](https://www.revistas-filologicas.unam.mx/acta-poetica/index.php/ap/article/view/778) In the film's back story, the Portuguese suppressed riots by burning the entire island to the ground in the sixteenth century, then returned with African slaves to work the sugar plantations.[9](https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/alan-stone-last-battle/)
In the 1840s the British agent Sir William Walker arrives to foment a slave revolt that will break the Portuguese colonial sugar monopoly and open the island to British interests.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada) He manipulates José Dolores, an enslaved African he first meets as a waterfront porter carrying his bags, into becoming the revolt's leader.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada) • [10](https://www.tcm.com/articles/345418/burn-aka-queimada) The rising drives out the Portuguese government and creates an independent Queimada, but the freed slaves fall under a mulatto bourgeoisie while British merchants control the sugar trade.[9](https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/alan-stone-last-battle/)
Ten years later Walker returns, now working for the British-backed Royal Sugar Company, to destroy the rebellion he himself created, which has begun to damage British sugar interests.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada) A montage condenses the intervening decade: in May 1845 Dolores dissolves his army and Queimada becomes a republic; in 1847 the republic cedes the right to exploit the sugar plantations to the Antilles Royal Sugar Corporation for ninety-nine years; in 1848 the cane cutters enter the city and set it ablaze, and Dolores's army reorganizes.[11](https://escholarship.org/content/qt98h08803/qt98h08803.pdf) The film ends ambiguously: Walker, stabbed as he walks to his ship, hears a voice asking "your bag, señor?", the same words Dolores spoke to him on his arrival and first departure.[12](https://independentleft.ie/news/reviews/page/3/)
## Production
Pontecorvo came to the project on the acclaim for *The Battle of Algiers*, and the script by Franco Solinas and Giorgio Arlorio was heavily influenced by [Frantz Fanon](https://www.edgepedia.org/frantz-fanon)'s *The Wretched of the Earth*.[10](https://www.tcm.com/articles/345418/burn-aka-queimada) • [1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada) The film was loosely based on a slave revolt in [Guadeloupe](https://www.edgepedia.org/guadeloupe).[13](https://ficcifestival.com/sites/default/files/2026-05/Catalogo_Oficial_FICCI_65.pdf) Pontecorvo resisted studio pressure to cast [Steve McQueen](https://www.edgepedia.org/steve-mcqueen) as Walker and Sidney Poitier as Dolores, keeping Brando, who considered it his favorite performance.[7](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/the-hour-of-the-birth-of-death/108013.article) • [3](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2004/08/queimada/)
**Spain to Portugal.** As the film went over budget, [United Artists](https://www.edgepedia.org/united-artists) demanded concessions. Fearing that the Spanish government would ban the film and block the use of Spain as a location for other projects, the studio had the colonial power changed from Spain to Portugal, although Portugal had no Caribbean colonies.[7](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/the-hour-of-the-birth-of-death/108013.article) The title had been *Quemada*, Spanish for "burned"; Spanish authorities pressured Pontecorvo into substituting Portugal as the imperial power, and the Italian release title became *Queimada*.[3](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2004/08/queimada/) • [4](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1970/11/07/the-current-cinema-21)
**Editing and release.** Pontecorvo was given eight weeks to edit the film, leaving no time to work on the musical score with [Ennio Morricone](https://www.edgepedia.org/ennio-morricone) as he had on *Algiers*, and United Artists demanded final cut.[7](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/the-hour-of-the-birth-of-death/108013.article) For the American release the studio had the film cut by about twenty minutes, retitled *Burn!*, and, in Jonathan Rosenbaum's account, "dumped" it, so that it never reached a wide public.[3](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2004/08/queimada/) [The Italian](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-italian) censorship visa was issued on 18 December 1969, and the film opened in Spain on 21 January 1971.[2](https://www.archiviodelcinemaitaliano.it/index.php/scheda.html?codice=AG2669) • [5](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=771050) It was banned for years in Brazil.[14](https://www.pandorafilmes.com.br/filmes/queimada/)
## Cast and filming
Marlon Brando played Sir William Walker, an English agent provocateur working for Her Majesty's government; the character shares only a name with the real nineteenth-century American military adventurer William Walker.[10](https://www.tcm.com/articles/345418/burn-aka-queimada) Evaristo Márquez, a nonprofessional actor from San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, played José Dolores; critics have read his presence as inscribing the film in the history of Afro-Caribbean resistance.[15](https://ficcifestival.com/proyecciones/queimada) Renato Salvatori played Teddy Sanchez, the island's governor.[2](https://www.archiviodelcinemaitaliano.it/index.php/scheda.html?codice=AG2669)
The film was shot in Colombia, including Cartagena, with international and local crews.[7](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/the-hour-of-the-birth-of-death/108013.article) • [15](https://ficcifestival.com/proyecciones/queimada) Pontecorvo was shooting in Colombia when the American Academy nominated him as Best Director for *The Battle of Algiers* in 1969.[7](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/the-hour-of-the-birth-of-death/108013.article)
## Reception and interpretation
Critics have read *Queimada* as a study of how revolution can be induced, directed, and finally reabsorbed by imperial power.[15](https://ficcifestival.com/proyecciones/queimada) The Princeton historian [Natalie Zemon Davis](https://www.edgepedia.org/natalie-zemon-davis) recognized allusions in the film's imaginary island to actual events "from Brazil, Saint-Domingue, Jamaica, Cuba, and elsewhere in the Caribbean".[9](https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/alan-stone-last-battle/) Pauline Kael, reviewing the American release in *The New Yorker*, called it "perhaps the least condescending film that has ever dealt with slavery" while judging that the film "goes wrong" in execution; she elsewhere described Pontecorvo as "the most dangerous kind of Marxist: a Marxist poet".[4](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1970/11/07/the-current-cinema-21) • [8](https://www.revistas-filologicas.unam.mx/acta-poetica/index.php/ap/article/view/778) Time Out found it "a flawed but fascinating film", praising Brando's performance and Pontecorvo's "sharp, provocative analysis of colonialism".[16](https://www.timeout.com/movies/queimada) On the re-release aggregation at Metacritic it holds a Metascore of 72, with a 90 from the *Washington Post*.[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/burn%21/critic-reviews/)
Morricone's score has been noted for an epic tone that never becomes fully triumphant, wrapping the action in constant unease.[15](https://ficcifestival.com/proyecciones/queimada) Later scholarship has used the film in interdisciplinary work on anticolonial struggle and on how social movements are represented in education.[17](https://revistas.ufg.br/historia/article/view/73400) • [18](https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/YVsxFDnhCmGnLkr8rPdmx8Q/?lang=pt)
## References
1. [Queimada, International Film Festival Rotterdam](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2018/films/queimada)
2. [Queimada, Archivio del Cinema Italiano](https://www.archiviodelcinemaitaliano.it/index.php/scheda.html?codice=AG2669)
3. [Queimada, Jonathan Rosenbaum](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2004/08/queimada/)
4. [Mythmaking, Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1970)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1970/11/07/the-current-cinema-21)
5. [Queimada, ficha ICAA 771050, Catálogo de Películas](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=771050)
6. [Burn! (re-release) critic reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/burn%21/critic-reviews/)
7. [The hour of the birth of death, Times Higher Education](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/the-hour-of-the-birth-of-death/108013.article)
8. [Imágenes melancólicas. El cine de las revoluciones vencidas, Acta Poética](https://www.revistas-filologicas.unam.mx/acta-poetica/index.php/ap/article/view/778)
9. [Last Battle, Boston Review](https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/alan-stone-last-battle/)
10. [Burn! aka Queimada!, Jay Carr, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/345418/burn-aka-queimada)
11. [Telescopic Relationality in Burn!, eScholarship (UC Santa Barbara)](https://escholarship.org/content/qt98h08803/qt98h08803.pdf)
12. [Queimada, an unjustly neglected classic revolutionary film, Independent Left](https://independentleft.ie/news/reviews/page/3/)
13. [Catálogo Oficial FICCI 65](https://ficcifestival.com/sites/default/files/2026-05/Catalogo_Oficial_FICCI_65.pdf)
14. [Queimada, Pandora Filmes](https://www.pandorafilmes.com.br/filmes/queimada/)
15. [Queimada, Festival FICCI](https://ficcifestival.com/proyecciones/queimada)
16. [Queimada! film review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/queimada)
17. [Potências em Queimada! (1969), História Revista](https://revistas.ufg.br/historia/article/view/73400)
18. [Movimentos Sociais: clichês e redes educativas no filme Queimada!, SciELO](https://www.scielo.br/j/edreal/a/YVsxFDnhCmGnLkr8rPdmx8Q/?lang=pt)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1960s › Released 1966 to 1969*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license