AfricaIs aCountry

Movies that matter

Africa Is a Country Podcast
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Movies that matter

By
Tom Devriendt

If you can’t make it to Stockholm next week, visiting The Hague might be a good alternative. The Movies That Matter Festival has also planned some promising premieres (and I’m relying more on the trailers than on the film festival’s site descriptions). Three films I hope to see there are. First up, Surprising Europe, a “documentary about a disappointed immigrant, who wants to show his fellow-countrymen the true face of Europe.” More on the film’s website.

The Mobile Cinema “… follows the mobile cinema crew members as they travel through inhospitable areas of Congo, to screen their much-awarded Fighting the Silence and change people’s attitude towards rape.”

And a documentary about rapper Sister Fa:

Sarabah

Subjected to female genital mutilation as a child, the Queen of Hip Hop now campaigns to protect Senegalese girls from a similar fate. In the film, she returns to her native village to try to put an end to this centuries-old tradition through music and education.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPPX4cnEIUQ

A full list of the featuring films can be found here.

— Tom Devriendt

Further Reading

Gen Z’s electoral dilemma

Long dismissed as apathetic, Kenya’s youth forced a rupture in 2024. As the 2027 election approaches, their challenge is turning digital rebellion and street protest into political power.

A world reimagined in Black

By placing Kwame Nkrumah at the center of a global Black political network, Howard W. French reveals how the promise of pan-African emancipation was narrowed—and what its failure still costs Africa and the diaspora.

Securing Nigeria

Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.

Empire’s middlemen

From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.

À qui s’adresse la CAN ?

Entre le coût du transport aérien, les régimes de visas, la culture télévisuelle et l’exclusion de classe, le problème de l’affluence à la CAN est structurel — et non le signe d’un manque de passion des supporters.

Lions in the rain

The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.