Best International Feature Film at 94 th Academy Awards; Chad’s selected entry and nominee for Palme d’Or at Cannes; and 8 other awards With ‘Lingui – the Sacred Bonds’, director Saleh-Haroun has crafted a beautiful, subtle, and gently uplifting testament to the universal human quality of ‘Lingui’. In Chad, Lingui is a concept that refers […]
Theater: Auckland
Tonton Manu
Best Musical Film Cannes 2021, selected at Harlem IFF 2022 Filmed before the pandemic struck France, this is a tribute to Manu Dibango, one of the great icons of African music who died of Covid in 2020. In the five years or so before his death the film records and reveals Manu in all his […]
Flatland
Opening film of Berlin Panorama Section, selected for Toronto IFF Natalie, her beloved horse Oumie and best friend Poppy (heavily pregnant) are on the run in the desert Karoo region after a killing on Natalie’s wedding night. At the same time police officer Beauty, with her own parallel story to tell, is setting out to […]
Saloum
Winner of the Next Wave award, Fantastic Fest 2021; Best Director Award, Sap Paulo IFF 2021 “Revenge is like a river whose bottom is reached only when we drown”. Crime thriller, horror, and fantasy, this film whizzes through a fast-paced tale of the three ‘Bangui Hyenas’, a group of mercenaries come to take their revenge […]
The Gravedigger’s Wife
Golden Stallion of Yennega Award, FESPACO; Africa Movie Academy Award for best actor in a leading role; AMAA for Best Film 2021; Jussi Award for Best Music 2022; Jussi Award for best costume design, best makeup, best production design 2021; AMAA for best film in an African language. Middle-aged Guled, working in the slums of […]
Under the Fig Trees(Sous les Figues)
The film won several post-production awards at the Venice IFF; selected at the Melbourne, Toronto, and Sarajevo IFF’s; second prize at the Marrakesh IFF Atlas workshop; selected at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 2022, and Film Fest Munich A beautiful and sensual film that follows a day in the life and psyches of a group of teenage […]
Desert Rocker
Old women play Rock ‘n Roll! In the last 40 years, the pioneering Hasna elBecharia has brought about a small revolution in Algerian traditional Gnawa music. Originally the preserve of the men of the Gnawa culture of ex-southern slaves in Algeria, Gnawa has been taken over by women, led by the indomitable 60-somethingHasna. The documentary […]
Dancing the Twist in Bamako
Opening night at the Milan African, Asian, and South American IFF; Valladolid IFF, nominee for Golden Spike Award for Best Film It is 1962, and Mali has just gained its independence from France and established a socialist government under Modibo Keita. In this environment, a passionate and impetuous love affair evolves between two youths, Samba(Stephane […]
The Dakar – Djibouti Mission: The Spoils of Mankind
Four ethnographers led by Marcel Griaulefrom the Paris Museum of Mankindtravel on a famous/infamous expedition from west to east across 1930’s Africa, with the express idea of gathering traditional artifacts from the supposedly ‘dying cultures they encounter en route. Thus they rationalise the buying and stealing of the people’s sacred objects for exhibit back in […]
Otiti
Brazil FF Otiti, a talented seamstress working towards a fashion show is plagued by emotional reserve and a general hesitancy around commitment. Her chance meeting with a new customer reveals that she is in fact the abandoned daughter of a wealthy man, and she goes to meet him in search of answers to her life. […]
The Rumba Kings
*The Rumba Kings has won at least 16 awards at international film festivals, including Best Feature Length Documentary, at Cannes. This is truly a feast of Congolese Rumba and a revelation of Congolese history, set in the years of liberation from colonial rule and afterward. “The Rumba Kings celebrates the epic quest of the Democratic […]
Fish Out Of Water
‘Fish Out Of Water’ is a local feature film starring Namibian model and reality TV personality, Maria Nepembe and the film ‘Katutura’ lead, actress and socialite Tjuna Kauapirurua. The film narrates the story of Maila, a young woman who sets off from the rural areas to Luderitz, hoping to land a job at the fish […]