AfricaIs aCountry

5 New Films to Watch Out For, N°27

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

5 New Films to Watch Out For, N°27

By
Tom Devriendt

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 visual styles: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZabqZmA9lE

Below’s the pilot video for King Khama: The African Abe Lincoln (assuming the second part of the tile is provisional), a proposed animated movie about Botswana’s King Khama III. Know your history. The project’s website has more details (including excerpts of the script).

The Forgotten Kingdom is a long feature written and directed by Andrew Mudge. The Examiner has an interview with him about the genesis of the film — we learn the production crew was small, “made up mostly of interns from within the country with no film experience”, starring a cast of Basotho and South African actors — and a first favorable review. Predictably, debates broke out on the film’s Facebook wall after the release of the trailer over whether this is “the first film to come out of Lesotho” (the line they’re promoting it with), “a Lesotho film,” or “a South African film”. We won’t wade in. No news yet on when it will be showing in Maseru’s cinemas:



Tik & the Turkey is a one-hour documentary, currently in post-production, depicting the heroin and methamphetamine (also known as “tik”) problem in Cape Town, South Africa and the devastating effects it has on the people and the communities. Some perspective of the story’s urgency: a recent report suggested “1 in 5” (stats depend on who you ask) of school-going youth in the Cape flats are actively using tik.



Ali Blue Eyes is a film by Claudio Giovannesi about an Italian teen of Egyptian heritage (lead role for Nader Sarhan) caught between his conflicting identities. Variety‘s review is onto something when the author remarks that while “(a) young man trying to balance his roots with his environment has long been a familiar figure in cinema, the subject is of more recent vintage in Italy, which has only recently begun coming to grips with an immigrant population.”

Further Reading

Visiting Ngara

A redevelopment project in Nairobi’s Ngara district promises revival—but raises deeper questions about capital, memory, and who has the right to shape the city.

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.