Flame

During the height of the Rhodesian Bush War, Florence impulsively runs away from her Mashonaland village after her father is detained by the security forces. She is joined by her friend Nyasha, and together they decide to pursue militancy and liberation. Their departure marks the start of a dangerous journey toward a guerrilla life.

Nyasha and Florence trek across the border into Mozambique to join a ZANLA training camp, leaving civilian life behind. They endure the harsh conditions of early guerrilla preparation and begin to assume revolutionary identities alongside their new peers. The border crossing seals their commitment to the struggle.

At the camp, the two girls undergo intensive guerrilla training and assume new noms de guerre. Nyasha becomes Liberty, a symbol of her longing for independence, while Florence takes Flame, reflecting her fiery temperament. The transition from civilian youth to armed activist solidifies as tactics and discipline are learned.

Flame becomes pregnant after being raped by Comrade Che, a cynical ZANLA political commissar. She is devastated at first but resolves to raise the child within the camp, insisting on a personal stake in the revolution. The event tests her loyalties and reshapes her sense of purpose.

A Rhodesian air strike hits the camp, killing Che and Flame's unborn child. Flame survives the attack, and the tragedy hardens her resolve to train harder and fight more fiercely. The loss becomes a turning point that deepens her commitment to the war.

Refusing despair, Flame hones her skills and distinguishes herself in several raids against infrastructure and farms. Her leadership earns respect within ZANLA circles and she becomes a feared and capable operative. The campaigns fuse personal grief with political resolve.

The war ends and Robert Mugabe is elected in 1980, signaling a transition to civilian rule. Flame and other former guerrillas struggle to adjust to peacetime life, finding little support from the new government. Disillusionment and unemployment soon shadow the veteran generation.

Flame moves to Harare, seeking stability after years in the camps. Liberty, leveraging her intelligence background, secures a lucrative administrative post that underscores a shift from collective struggle to individual advancement. The two women reunite, though their relationship is strained by the changes time has wrought.

Five years after the war, Flame and Liberty attend a Heroes' Day gathering, reflecting on their past while navigating a changing country. Flame asks Liberty for financial help to adapt, but Liberty has grown wary of returning to the old mutual-aid arrangement. Their exchange reveals the widening rift between wartime ideals and peacetime reality.

At the Heroes' Day party, the pair witness Zimbabwe tilting toward authoritarianism and corruption. They still greet passersby with the pan-African slogan 'A luta continua', a haunting reminder that the struggle persists in speech if not in spirit. The scene captures the film's tension between memory and political decline.

The veterans' dream of shared revolution collides with a society that prizes individual gain over collective welfare. Flame and Liberty navigate the evolving state while questioning whether the old promises can ever be fulfilled. The narrative highlights the fragility of independence and the persistence of doubt.

In the closing moments, Flame and Liberty continue to invoke the old slogan even as the country drifts, implying that the struggle persists more as memory than as a tangible path forward. The film ends on a note of ambivalence about post-colonial progress and the price of survival. Freedom remains fragile and contested in a changing Zimbabwe.