Cinematic universality
Fatou Cissé’s directorial debut meditates on the uncertain fate and importance of Malian cinema amidst the growing dismissiveness towards the humanities across the world.
documentary
This is what they don’t want you to know
A new film on the life of Walter Rodney gives a glimpse of his radical solidarity politics and centers on his family, who struggled and suffered with him.
The cemetery of cinema
Thierno Souleymane Diallo’s latest film traces his search for what is likely the first film made by a Guinean, in the process asking: how is a film culture possible when the infrastructure and institutions are lacking?
Emancipation that costs servitude
Filmmaker Khady Sylla amplifies the voices of and gives visibility to the domestic workers tending to the homes of Africa’s middle classes.
The dust, towers and false promises of modern Ethiopia
Successive Ethiopian governments have continued a 'modernizing' project that not only offers people false dreams, but actively dislocates them from the things that gave them purpose in the past.
The balancing act of being African and an artist
In the documentary film 'Abderrahmane Sissako, un cinéaste à l’Opéra,' the director is in complete control of his artistic vision.
After we have grown too tired of jumping
The Ghanaian game, Ampe, is an education in Blackness and womanhood.
The arc of the boomerang
More than class solidarity alone, more than a technocratic climate justice, a reckoning with empire is necessary for our collective survival.
So that the victims do not die a second time
To put an end to general indifference about the 25 years of political violence in DR Congo, filmmaker Thierry Michel chooses to show the worst atrocities and to name the war criminals.
We are all potential advocates
Director Shameela Seedat’s film about trainee lawyers provides a sort of celebration of youth on this continent and a vision of the next generation of Africans.
Resisting petty apartheid
The historian Premesh Lalu’s film about an apartheid-era cinema on the Cape Flats also offers a glimpse of a future beyond racism for South Africa.
Panthers in Congo
The film 'Congo Oyé,' pulled from the archives of a New York City library a decade ago, explores different interpretations of revolution, Black sovereignty and liberation.
What is it about the Kenyan postcolonial state?
The lesson from political economist Rok Ajulu’s academic work and activism: it’s not enough to change the “tenants,” but fight to change both the “state” and all of its houses.
El maestro siempre
Maky Madiba Sylla is a militant filmmaker excavating iconic Africans whose legacies he believes need to be known widely—like the singer Laba Sosseh.
Countering the narrative
If committed filmmakers want to reach and influence more people, and counter fake news, impact producing may help get us there.
Two women, two stories, both winners
The documentary film Mane about two women—a rapper and a wrestler—is a much-needed boost of fresh air in the male-saturated tale of the “Generation hip hop” of Senegal.
This is a sensorial feast, not a burial
Although overlooked this awards season, a new film by Lebohang Jeremiah Mosese deserves your attention.
Resonant music
The film "Africa Mia” (2019), directed by Richard Minier and Edouard Salier, explores the musical connections between Cuba and Mali.
Colonial accountability in transition
The mass atrocities of the 1899 French invasion of what is Niger today are finally being treated with the gravity and consequence they deserve in Western popular histories.
Musically, Congo is the mothership
The documentary, Rumba Kings, offers a commendable and tireless argument for both an intangible cultural heritage case and a centering of the Congolese way.