Burkina Faso

  • Idrissa Ouedraogo – Samba Traoré (1992)

    Idrissa Ouedraogo1991-2000African CinemaBurkina FasoDramaThriller
    Samba Traoré (1992)
    Samba Traoré (1992)

    Quote:
    Samba Traoré had left his village years ago to seek his fortune in the big city. He has found only unemployment and rootlessness. As the film begins, he is part of a filling station holdup in which his partner is killed but Samba Traoré, determined, takes the money at gunpoint.

    He returns to his village, hides the money, and lets out that he has been successful and now wants to live at home. He resumes old friendships. He marries. His impulses run away with him as opportunities arise to spend more and more of the money. At first people just think he did well in the city. Then they think he did amazingly well. Then they think that they never dreamed anyone could make so much money. Finally his trail becomes so obvious that the police hear of him.Read More »

  • Idrissa Ouedraogo – Tilaï AKA The Law (1990)

    1981-1990African CinemaBurkina FasoDramaIdrissa OuedraogoRomance

    Quote:
    Tilaï opens to a long sequence, off-axis shot of a lone traveler moving away from view as he slowly traverses the arid, featureless plain on a lumbering, overburdened mule and disappears into the desolate horizon. It is an appropriately distanced and alienated introduction for the weary, but sanguine Saga (Rasmane Ouedraogo) who, after an extended journey away from his native village, has returned to the foreboding sight of anxious villagers assembled at a clearing near the entrance of the intimate community. Greeted by his brother Kougri (Assane Ouedraogo) who heads off Saga at the footpath to the village on behalf of the family, Kougri informs him of an unforeseen (and reprehensible) development during his absence: the marriage of his beloved Nogma (Ina Cissé) to their father Nomenaba (Seydou Ouedraogo), having changed his mind and taken the reluctant young woman – once promised to Saga by the old man himself – as his second wife.Read More »

  • S. Pierre Yameogo – Moi et mon blanc AKA Me and My White Man (2003)

    2001-2010African CinemaBurkina FasoComedyS. Pierre Yameogo

    Plot: Mamadi is struggling to complete a doctorate at a Parisian university after the government of his country has stopped paying his scholarship. Thanks to his acquaintances in the African community, he finds a job as night watchman in an underground car park. There, a French colleague, Franck, helps the friendly African academic getting around. However, the car park is also a meeting point for dubious characters, and when Mamadi accidentally wrecks a drug trafficking operation, Franck is really hard-pressed to put his pal and himself out of harm’s way. Wouldn’t Mamadi’s home country be the ideal place to escape the gangsters’ wrath?Read More »

  • Apolline Traoré – Frontières AKA Borders (2017)

    2011-2020Apolline TraoréBurkina FasoDrama

    Four women from different regions develop friendships during a bus journey across West Africa, as they accomplish an everyday journey while facing the universal challenge of being independent women.Read More »

  • Med Hondo – Sarraounia (1986)

    1981-1990African CinemaArthouseBurkina FasoEpicMed Hondo

    Sarrouina (Keïta), a young warrior queen of the Azna tribe well-schooled in the arts of herbalism and warfare, leads her people to victory against a neighboring tribe. But the real trial of strength for her comes when the French army marches south to widen its colonial grip on the African continent. The second half of the film focuses on the French, acidly but plausibly satirized as little tyrants whose megalomania swells in proportion with their failure to grasp the realities of the culture they are trying to crush. Grounded in careful historical research, Sarraounia is a superbly crafted and expansive film that strikes a celebratory, assertive tone.Read More »

  • Idrissa Ouedraogo – Yaaba AKA Grandmother (1989)

    1981-1990African CinemaBurkina FasoDramaIdrissa Ouedraogo

    Quote:
    A simple story about the status of old people in African society told with amazing grace”. A small african village. Bila, a ten year old boy who befriends an old woman, Sana. Everybody calls her ‘Witch’ but Bila himself calls her ‘Yaaba’ (grandmother). When Bilas cousin Nopoko gets sick it is Sana’s medicin who rescues her.Read More »

  • Haile Gerima – Sankofa (1993)

    1991-2000ArthouseBurkina FasoDramaHaile Gerima

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    From the New York Times review:
    “In “Sankofa,” a contemporary African-American woman travels back in time and experiences slavery. Haile Gerima’s poetic and precisely detailed film takes its audience into its heroine’s life and mind as her moral sense is challenged and changed. No viewer can avoid the discomforting questions the film so eloquently raises.

    The opening sequences, set and filmed in Ghana, are alternately seductive and off-putting. Among drums and chants, a voice invokes ancestral ghosts. “Spirit of the dead, rise up,” the voice says, “and claim your story.” The film’s title is a West African term meaning to reclaim the past in order to go forward, and “Sankofa” stumbles only in its depiction of the present.Read More »

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