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Guimba the Tyrant
🇲🇱 MaliThe movie shows the rise and fall of a cruel and despotic village chief Guimba, and his son Jangine in a fictional village in the Sahel of Mali.
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Tree of Blood
🇬🇼 Guinea-BissauDone in the style of an African folk tale, this film, a collaboration between European and African countries, is said to be among the most elaborate, high tech film in African film. Exquisitely photographed and filled with archetypal figures to create a poetic look at nature's revenge against those who would exploit her. It is set in the forest village of Amanha Lundju, a place where the birth of children is celebrated by the planting of a tree. The trees are considered spiritual twins. But for every tree planted, the rapacious state destroys many more for firewood and lumber.
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Deadly Voyage
🇬🇭 GhanaWhen stowaways are found on board a Russian cargo ship, some of the officers and crew decide to dispose of them at sea. The last time they had a stowaway on board, the ship was fined heavily and black marks entered into their records, when he made it off the ship into a foreign port.
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The Island of Contenda
🇨🇻 Cabo Verde The 1960sCape Verde, 1964. At the feet of a mighty volcano, the traditional Cape Verdean society is undergoing a steady change. The old land-owning aristocracy is disintegrating. A class of "mulattos" begins to emerge, with a trade-based financial power that threatens the landlords. A new identity arises, a mix of old and new, of African and Portuguese culture, sensual and dynamic. The songs of Cesária Évora follow this inevitable transformation. From the novel by Henrique Teixeira de Sousa.
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Casa de Lava
🇨🇻 Cabo VerdeThe film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.
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The Golden Ball
🇲🇱 MaliThe Golden Ball is a wonderful children's film that tells of a young boy's dream of being a soccer player. Whenever a match is broadcast live in the village of Makono, Bandian and his brother keep their ears to the transistor radio, spinning a picture of the game from the announcer's commentary much as they fantasize themselves on the field. A gift of a real soccer ball, which Bandian paints gold, like a magical object involves him in a series of adventures which bring him in reach of his dream, but which also require him to make difficult choices.
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The Rue Princesse Street
🇨🇮 Côte dIvoireEmile, his wife Fanta and their four children lead a comfortable existence. Jean, the eldest son, is interested only in music to his father's regret. One day Jean is sent away from home because of it...
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Women with Eyes Open
🇧🇫 Burkina Faso 🇧🇯 Benin 🇲🇱 Mali 🇸🇳 Senegal The 1990sPortraits of contemporary African women from four West African nations: Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Benin.
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Black Light
🇲🇱 MaliWhen a man's best friend is shot in cold blood by two corrupt policemen, he must track down the only eyewitnesses, who have deported to Mali.
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Sankofa
🇬🇭 GhanaOn a photo shoot in Ghana, an American model slips back in time, becomes enslaved on a plantation and bears witness to the agony of her ancestral past.
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Samba Traoré
🇧🇫 Burkina FasoSamba (Bakary Sangare) has returned unannounced to his home village, bringing with him a suitcase full of money. Despite his protests that this is money that he earned in the city, the villagers have their doubts. In fact, he held up a gas station and unintentionally killed its attendant, and is in hiding here. Meanwhile, he has married a woman (Mariam Kaba) with a child who left her husband and built a house for her. He is building a bar with his remaining money, but he encounters a situation which makes him believe that he will be exposed to the police, and runs away, leaving a pregnant, very ill wife behind, much to the disgust of the villagers and Samba's own family.
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The Blue Eyes of Yonta
🇬🇼 Guinea-BissauA beautiful, intelligent and flirtatious young girl, Yonta, is secretly in love with a friend of her parents, Vicente, a hero of the war of independence. Vicente is unaware of her passion as she is of the love of a young man who sends her anonymous love letters.
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Living in Bondage
🇳🇬 NigeriaThe film tells the story of a man who joins a secret cult, kills his wife in a ritual sacrifice, gains enormous wealth as a reward, and is afterwards haunted by the dead wife's ghost
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Karim and Sala
🇧🇫 Burkina FasoKarim's father is missing and presumed dead, which is why his father's brother has taken over the house and is now his stepfather: this is the custom in Burkina Faso. This would be all right with Karim, except that his new stepfather is a harsh, unloving man, who would just as soon beat him as look at him, and he is the same way with the lad's mother. At the same time, Karim has made friends with Sala, a girl from a wealthy family, starting from when he gave her a baby goat-kid. Their friendship prospers enough so that, when Karim and his mother leave the abusive uncle carrying only what they are wearing on their backs, Sala is able to persuade her family to help them settle safely elsewhere. When Karim's father turns up at last, it is icing on the cake, for they are now able to send the obnoxious man who overshadowed their lives away in disgrace.
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The Law
🇧🇫 Burkina FasoSaga returns to his village after an extended absence to discover that his father has taken Nogma, Saga's promised bride, for himself. Still in love with each other, the two begin an affair, although it would be considered incestuous.
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Mister Johnson
🇳🇬 Nigeria The 1920sAfrica 1923: A clash of cultures between British imperalists and a black man too smart for his own good. — In 1923 British Colonial Nigeria, Mister Johnson is an oddity -- an educated black man who doesn't really fit in with the natives or the British. He works for the local British magistrate, and considers himself English, though he has never been to England. He is always scheming, trying to get ahead, which lands him in a lot of hot water.
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Yaaba
🇧🇫 Burkina FasoA small African village. The story focuses on Bila, a ten year old boy who befriends an old woman, Sana. Everybody calls her 'Witch' but Bila himself calls her 'Yaaba' (grandmother). When Bila's cousin Nopoko gets sick it is Sana's medicine that saves her.
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Dancing in the Dust
🇨🇮 Côte dIvoireThe chief of an African village, who is called 'Demi Dieu' because after God he is the owner of all the things, already has five wives. But as this is not enough he decides to find himself a sixth wife so that he has one for every day of the week except on Sunday when he uses to relax.
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Heritage Africa
🇬🇭 Ghana The 1950sThe story of Quincy Bosomfield who is the product of colonial education and has risen to become the district commissioner. In the process, he abandons his African heritage and all that has real meaning to him.
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The Islands' Message
🇨🇻 Cabo VerdeThe journey of an intellectual Creole. Before returning from Lisbon to Luanda, he stops in the Cape Verde islands in search of his ethnic and cultural roots.
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Bouka
🇨🇮 Côte dIvoireBouka is a gifted young teenager. He lives with his parents in a village and forms with them a solid family. His father gives him a traditional education close to nature. Unfortunately this happiness will be troubled by the brutal death of the father…Remained widow, the mother of Bouka will suffer the consequences of a relentless traditional principle. She become the new wife of the nephew of her late husband, Bouka doesn’t accepts this new condition of her mother. He suspects his stepfather to be involved in his father death. He stops to go to school and organize a gang in the forest. In this tormented atmosphere, he develops a mortal hate towards its new "father"…
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Those Whom Death Refused
🇬🇳 Guinea 🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau The 1970sThe story of a woman who searches through the country for her husband, a resistant, while the war for independence is raging. She finds him at last and saves his life. When peace finally arrives, they have to learn how to be together again and start living in a destroyed land.
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Cobra Verde
🇧🇯 Benin The 19th CenturyA fearsome 19th century bandit, Cobra Verde cuts a swath through Brazil until he arrives at the sugar plantation of Don Octávio Countinho. Not knowing that his new guest is the notorious bandit and impressed by his ruthless ways, Don Octávio hires Cobra Verde to oversee his slaves. But when Cobra Verde impregnates Don Octávio’s three daughters, the incensed plantation owner exiles the outlaw to Africa where he is expected to reopen the slave trade. Following his trans-Atlantic journey, Cobra Verde exploits tribal conflicts to commandeer an abandoned fortress and whips an army of naked warriors into a frenzied bloodlust as he vies for survival.
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Yeelen
🇲🇱 Mali The 13th CenturyA young man with magical powers journeys to his uncle to request help in fighting his sorcerer father.
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Location Africa
🇬🇭 GhanaMaking-of documentary that covers "Cobra Verde," Herzog's last film with Kinski before Kinski's death. This is the documentary that registers the behind the scenes moments of "Cobra Verde", the last project that united director Werner Herzog to actor Klaus Kinski. The notorious and infamous relation between the two filled Cinema theatres with masterpieces, but also filled pages of Cinema History with mutual declarations of both love and hate.
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The Choice
🇧🇫 Burkina FasoPoverty and misery are rife in Gourga, a village in the Sahel. The inhabitants must choose: stay and await international assistance or leave for more fertile regions in the country.
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Sarraounia
🇳🇪 Niger The 1890sOn 2 January 1899, starting from the French Sudan, a French column under the command of the captains Voulet and Chanoine is sent against the black Sultan Rabah in what is now the Cameroon. Those captains and their African mercenary troops destroy and kill everything they find on their path. The French authorities try to stop them sending orders and a second troop but the captains kill the emissaries who reach them. Sarraounia, queen of the Aznas, have heard about the exactions. Clever in war tactics and in witchcraft, she decides to resist and stop those mad men.
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The Blooms of Banjeli
🇹🇬 TogoThe Blooms of Banjeli documents research in Banjeli, Togo on iron-smelting technology, its rituals, and the sexual prohibitions surrounding it. Including rare historical footage from the same village in 1914, it provides a unique technological record of the traditional method of preparing a furnace to smelt iron. This documentary offers an interesting approach to our understanding of the relationship between conceptions of gender and technology in traditional African society. The people of Banjeli liken the furnace to a woman's body, which is 'impregnated' by the smelter. The process of smelting is compared to that of giving birth, the furnace being the womb and the iron bloom, the newborn.
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Ablakon
🇨🇮 Côte dIvoireA city with its problems. A gang of abandoned children provide for themselves and pose as heroes. The police are on their backs day and night. They are enterprising, energetic, and full of fresh vitality. Despite the fact they are rejected by their parents and ignored by the world, they form among themselves a powerful example of solidarity. Ablakon is something of a different order. He is an adult delinquent and a swindler. Posing as a businessman, he has deceived a countless number of people. When he and his accomplice return to the village, his extravagant behaviour is mistaken for a sign of success. Following his example many young people leave for the city. But they will soon understand their mistake...
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Faces of Women
🇨🇮 Côte dIvoireAt a festival, a chorus of women sing and dance as two stories unfold. In a village, a young women with a jealous husband gives him something to be jealous about when his younger brother visits from the city.
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Issa le tisserand
🇧🇫 Burkina FasoDocumentrary short directed by Idrissa Ouedraogo.
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Fort Saganne
🇲🇷 Mauritania The 1910sIn 1911, a willful and determined man from peasant stock named Charles Saganne enlists in the military and is assigned to the Sahara Desert under the aristocratic Colonel Dubreuilh.
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Ouagadougou, ouaga deux roues
🇧🇫 Burkina FasoShort directed by Idrissa Ouedraogo.
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Sans Soleil
🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau"He wrote me..." A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
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The Wind
🇲🇱 MaliTwo Malian teenagers, Bah and Batrou, from different backgrounds, meet at secondary school. Bah is the descendent of a great tribal chieftain. Batrous father, a provincial military governor, represents the new ruling power. The two teenagers are part of a generation that rejects the established order and challenges the society in which they live.
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Coup de Torchon
🇸🇳 Senegal The 1930sIn 1938 in the french West Africa, Lucien Cordier is a weak and corrupted policeman despised by the local bad boys. His wife is openly cheating on him and he hasn't got any self-respect anymore. But when comes the occasion, his revenge will be terrible.
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Djeli, a Modern Tale
🇨🇮 Côte dIvoireKramoko Kouyate, son of a griot, cannot marry Fanta who is of noble blood. In flashback, the film explains the origin of the problem and shows their attempts to get around it.
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Love Brewed in the African Pot
🇬🇭 GhanaLove collides with social class and colonialism when Aba Appiah, born to privilege, falls in love with Joe Quansah, son of a fisherman. Her father, retired civil servant Kofi Appiah, has other plans for her, and seeks to block their marriage. The resulting conflict has complex and unexpected consequences.
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Work
🇲🇱 MaliA young manager of a factory encounters a man walking along a road who says his family traditionally are servants to the manager's family. The manager offers him a job, and as he watches out for the other man's welfare, begins to see how the company mistreats its workers. The manager is challenged between his ethics and the pressure from others to protect his own interests as dire problems surface at the factory
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Ceddo
🇸🇳 Senegal The 17th CenturyWhen King Demba War sides with the Muslims, the Ceddo kidnap his daughter, Princess Dior Yacine, to protest their forcible conversion to Islam.
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Babatu
🇳🇪 NigerOnce upon a time, in the middle of the last century, a great warrior named Babatou. Nigerian jumper from the region Dounga Gurunsi invaded the country and settled there. The brave prisoners were integrated into the army, women espoused. For fifty years, the adventurous young people from Niger Babatou went to live in the epic.
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Xala
🇸🇳 SenegalIt is the dawn of Senegal's independence from France, but as the citizens celebrate in the streets we soon become aware that only the faces have changed. White money still controls the government. One official, Aboucader Beye, known by the title "El Hadji," takes advantage of some of that money to marry his third wife, to the sorrow and chagrin of his first two wives and the resentment of his nationalist daughter. But he discovers on his wedding night that he has been struck with a "xala," a curse of impotence. El Hadji goes to comic lengths to find the cause and remove the xala, resulting in a scathing satirical ending.
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The Young Girl
🇲🇱 MaliA young mute woman is raped and becomes pregnant, with disastrous consequences within her family. The film also sketches the social/economic situation in urban Mali in the 1970s, particularly in relation to the treatment of women.
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Cock-A-Doodle-Doo! Mr Chicken
🇳🇪 NigerThe story follows three poultry sellers on a trip across the bush, attempting to deliver a load of chickens to a market in Niamey.
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Touki Bouki
🇸🇳 SenegalThe Journey of the Hyena — A cowherd with a skull-mounted motorcycle and a university student meet in Dakar; put off by life in Senegal, they plan to make money in Paris.
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Ganja & Hess
🇳🇬 NigeriaSome Marriages Are Made In Heaven. Others Are Made In Hell. — After being stabbed with an ancient, germ-infested knife, a doctor finds himself with an insatiable desire for blood.
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Emitaï
🇸🇳 Senegal The 1940sAs World War II is going on in Europe, a conflict arises between the French and the Diola-speaking tribe of Africa, prompting the village women to organize their men to sit beneath a tree to pray.
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The Polygamous Wazzou
🇳🇪 NigerAn Islamic faithfull returns from his holy pilgrimage to Mecca with the venerated title “el hadji”. On his return he falls in love with his daughter’s friend Santou, who is already engaged to be married to Garba. El Hadji however already has two wives and his second wife, Gaika, cannot stand the idea of another younger wife entering her house. She plots to kill Santou.
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