African Cinema

After winning a scholarship to study in France, a young Senegalese man returns home and questions his experience and his future, with honesty, courage and humour. — MUBIRead More »

Romeo and Juliet in the Algerian desert. Amin and Myriam are secretly in love. Their families are rivals and when their relationship is discovered, conflict is inevitable. In the quiet atmosphere of the palm groves, the two communities have long nurtured the seeds of discord and hatred. The persecution is the first signal of inevitable evil. From inside the cave where they have taken refuge, the two young people hear the cries of a senseless murderous raid. A universal metaphor to denounce the horror of all extremist violence, The Desert Ark is a splendid and terrifying metaphor for a burning contemporary reality.Read More »

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In pre-colonial times a peddler crossing the savanna discovers a child lying unconscious in the bush. When the boy comes to, he is mute and cannot explain who he is. The peddler leaves him with a family in the nearest village. After a search for his parents, the family adopts him, giving him the name Wend Kuuni (God’s Gift) and a loving sister with whom he bonds. Wend Kuuni regains his speech only after witnessing a tragic event that prompts him to reveal his own painful history.Read More »

AllMovie Synopsis:
This film, directed by Malian director Cheick Oumar Sissoku confronts the patriarchal traditions of Mali, including the controversial issue of female circumcision. A recent widow, Nanyuma feels liberated from the cruel treatment of her late husband but is ordered by the village chief to marry her husband’s equally oafish brother. She leaves the village and hides with her niece Fili but is eventually forced to return. Although her resistance to her culture’s rigid traditions stirs her people to a higher level of awareness of freedom and social independence, Nanyuma realizes that her only chance at claiming her own freedom will be by leaving her community. The film’s satiric approach is modeled after a theatrical tradition native to Mali.Read More »

In the harsh landscape of the Malian desert, Zamiatou fights to keep her two sons and daughter on the right path while dealing with a disabled husband who is mentally and physically scarred by his years as a political prisoner. Rejecting the idea of prostituting her daughter to French settlers for money, Zamiatou turns to a former lover, who lends her a donkey. With the animal in tow, she braves the desert alone to find a way to support her loved ones.Read More »

Irrepressible Touda only dreams of one thing: being a Sheikha, a respected traditional Moroccan performer empowered by the lyrics of the fierce female poets who came before her – with their songs of resistance and emancipation.

Performing every evening in provincial bars under the lustful gaze of men, Touda plans to set her sights on leaving her small village for the bright lights of Casablanca where she hopes to be recognized as a true artist and also secure a better future for her and her son.Read More »

imdb wrote:
An extraordinary story of a young woman raised in Switzerland who travels back to Algeria, her birthplace, to meet and kill her natural mother, who abandoned her shortly after birth. Along the way, she is exposed to the brutality of desert life and, in particular, the abuses that men heap upon women in fundamentalist, third world countries. Birth, death and life in general, have little meaning as people struggle for survival. The scenery is stark but at the same time beautiful and the faces of the characters that she meet are marvelous. The film was made in Tunisia, as it does not cast a particularly good light on Algerian men and probably could not have gotten permission to be filmed in Algeria where Sharia is the law of the land.Read More »

SYNOPSIS: Demi-dieu, a rich peasant from a village in Côte d’Ivoire, has five wives. He decides to marry a sixth. This way, he’ll have one for each day of the week. On Sundays, he’ll rest and reward the best-behaved one. But with Binta, the new wife conflicts soon erupt…Read More »

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Emily, Jabz, September, Nikki, Tanya, Matty, Tali and Rashi. Black and whites South Africans, male and female, gay and straight. Youth in the luxurious suburb of Johannesburg who are smashed all day long failing to have future plans.On the anniversary of the violent Soweto Youth Uprising of June 16th 1976, an affluent group of adolescent friends living in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa are shocked by the live-streamed suicide of a young girl in her family home. A year and some months after the incident, two disillusioned new-generation Zulu youths, Jabz and his best friend September, rummage through the sleepy manicured northern suburbs of Johannesburg in search of answers, drugs, distraction, and salvation.Read More »