L'État Sauvage is a 1978 French political drama directed by Francis Girod set in a newly independent African nation where white colonial powers still control key government positions and openly despise the local population. At the center of the story is Laurence, a French woman who abandons both her husband Avit and her former lover Gravenoire to pursue a passionate affair with Patrice Doumbé, the country's idealistic black health minister. Their interracial relationship scandalizes both sides — her white acquaintances treat her as a traitor, while Patrice's own cabinet colleagues mock him for being with a white woman — and as political corruption and racial violence escalate around them, Patrice is brutally murdered and Laurence barely escapes the country alive, saved ironically by the very husband she left behind.