An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is the creative debut feature of director Terence Nance who we got to know through the work he did together with Blitz the Ambassador. His new film is sold as a take on “young love” in the city of New York. First reviews praise, among other things, the mesh of […]
Born in a small township near Gondar in northwest Ethiopia, Yityish Aynaw recently became the latest Miss Israel. And then made some dumb comments about Ethiopian heritage and beauty. (“We have these chiseled faces. Everything is in the right place,” she said. “I never saw an Ethiopian who was stuck with some big nose.”) Which […]
Vers la forêt de nuages (“To the cloud forest”) is a film by Robin Hunzinger, who tells a story about his Ivorian wife Aya and their son Tim (in the image above), travelling in Côte d’Ivoire to pay tribute to Aya’s father who recently passed way. The film intends to offer a portrait of and an “initiation” to […]
Taking cues from the Belgian Africa Film Festival programme (which kicks off on March 15, running until March 30), here are 5 more films to watch out for. Below is the trailer for documentary maker Thierry Michell’s portrait of Congolese businessman-governor-football club owner Moïse Katumbi Chapwe. Michell’s relentless dedication to all things Congo is quite impressive. […]
Filmmaker Shannon Walsh teamed up with director and writer Arya Laloo to make Jeppe on a Friday, “a neighborhood documentary.” The setting is Jeppestown in Johannesburg, South Africa, chronicling a day in the lives of eight residents of this area on the brink of massive change. The featured residents are Beninese entrepreneurs Arouna and Zainab; […]
The Professor is a fiction film by Tunisian director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud. Synopsis: Tunis 1977. Khalsawi Khalil, Professor of Constitutional Law is responsible to defend the official State’s position in a period of tension between the government and the Interntional League for Human Rights. One day, Khalil learns that Houda, one of his students with […]
Documentary filmmakers are better at spreading the word about their new work on the web compared to fiction directors, or there’s just more documentary films being made. (Or I’m looking in the wrong places.) Here are ten more films to watch out for. First, four fiction features: A Menina dos Olhos Grandes (“The girl with […]
Ladies’ Turn is a documentary film by Hélène Harder about a team of Senegalese women who fight to follow their passion for football “all the way from small, neighborhood fields to the tournament finals in Dakar’s newest stadium.” More details on the film’s website. Trailer above. For screening dates, check on their Facebook page.
Here’s another list of 10 films in the making or already finished. Two long fiction features to start with. Dakar Trottoirs (directed by Hubert Laba Ndao; left) has “surrealist characters of a paradoxical theatre intermingling in the heart of the city.” Sounds real. There’s a write-up on the shooting of the film and a short […]
And by ‘African’ we mean — made by African or diaspora directors, Africa-themed, or set in Africa. Don’t spend too much time pondering about that definition though. First up this week is Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria, a documentary film (trailer above) by Jeff L. Lieberman about Nigerian Igbos who have adopted Judaism. (William Miles […]
