PLOT: A team of filmmakers in search of a theme asks young residents of Casablanca about their expectations and their relationship to Moroccan cinema. When they witness a crime committed by an unsatisfied dock worker who accidentally kills his boss, they are interested in this particular case. The investigation of the motifs will encourage them to rethink their conception of cinema and the role of the artist in society.Read More »
Quote:
A sorcerer (played by the director himself) controls all activities in a village. Manipulating the different parties, the sorcerer promises love, good health and riches in exchange for the most extravagant rewards. One day someone exposes him, and the sorcerer becomes the laughing stock of the whole village. Desperate, he throws himself off a cliff.Read More »
Quote:
Cape 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.Read More »
Quote:
Political turmoil turns two lifelong friends into enemies in this drama. In the African nation of Tanzania, Dijmi (Haikail Zakaria) and Koni (Abdoulaye Ahmat) grew up in the same small village and have remained good friends into adulthood. Skyrocketing taxes lead to a revolt among the people of Tanzania, with citizens taking up arms to bring down a government they feel exploits them without representation. Koni and Dijmi join the rebel forces, but after a spell during which they fight side by side, Koni decides the rebels aren’t doing enough for the revolution and breaks off with them to join a more extreme group, who soon find themselves at odds with the original revolutionary faction. Daresalam — the name of Tanzania’s largest city, which means “Haven of Peace” — was shot on location in Chad, where director Issa Serge Coelo was born. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie GuideRead More »
Set in the mid-1950s when Tangier was still an international zone, El Chergui presents the city on the eve of its independence, as Aïcha resorts to magical practices to try to prevent her husband from taking a second wife. Around her, a society of women creates its own form of active resistance even as the larger independence movement grows around it. Through his unique use of montage, Smihi creates arresting images that present a society torn by the contradictions of colonialism, religion, patriarchy, and resistance.Read More »
Synopsis:
Zerzura is a feature-length ethnofiction shot in the Sahara desert. Mixing folktales and documentary, the film follows a young man from Niger who leaves home in search of an enchanted oasis.Read More »
Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most renowned African director of the twentieth century—and yet his name still deserves to be better known in the rest of the world. He made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally—into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by M’Bissine Thérèse Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s.Read More »
An investigative reporter becomes entangled in deadly intrigue when she is assigned to get the story of the presidential candidate, and her job is complicated by a string of political assassinations and attempts.Read More »
Synopsis:
A group of African students in Paris are reaching the end of their studies. Should they return to their newly independent homelands or should they try to forge a home for themselves in a hostile and indifferent France ? In a very moving and atmospheric film, clearly influenced by the French New Wave, Ecaré beautifully captures the radicalism, sensuousness and ennui of the late 1960s Latin Quarter , as well as his characters’ sense of displacement and isolation.Read More »