Portal:African cinema

African Film and Television Portal

11th ed. | Updated biweekly | September 30-October 13, 2024

Featured Biography

Samuel Bazawule (b, 19 April 1982), known professionally as Blitz Bazawule and Blitz the Ambassador, is a Ghanaian filmmaker, author, visual artist, rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer. Blitz made his directorial debut with The Burial of Kojo (2018), which won Best First Feature Film by a director at the 15th Africa Movie Academy Awards and the Grand Nile Prize at the Luxor African Film Festival. He directed the musical film adaptation The Color Purple in 2023 and is currently developing a six-episode miniseries based on his novel The Scent of Burnt Flowers about an African American fugitive couple seeking refuge in Ghana. He is also developing another film based on the historic figure of Yasuke, Japan’s first Black samurai who lived in 16th century Japan.

Featured Industry Article

Triggerfish is a computer animation film studio based in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1996, it is Africa's leading animation company. The studio is known for its animated feature films Adventures in Zambezia (2012), Khumba (2013), and Seal Team (2021) and increasingly over the past several years, for its animated television series. These include the Disney+ superhero series Kiya & the Kimoja Heroes (2023), about an African girl whose passions in life are dancing and martial arts; Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, an Afrofuturist animated anthology series, also released in 2023 for Disney+; and the superhero series Supa Team 4, Netflix’s first original African animated series released in 2023.

In 2021, Triggerfish received the Mifa Animation Industry Award at Annecy International Animation Film Festival for "the pioneering role that the company has played in animation in South Africa, and Africa more widely." The company’s capacity building initiatives include Triggerfish Academy which offer online courses for aspiring animators; a pan-African Story Artist Lab in partnership with Netflix; and the Triggerfish Story Lab, a pan-African 2015 talent search that drew nearly 1,400 entries, with the goal of kickstarting new animated projects.

Notable This Month

A TV series adaptation of Chinua Achebe’s 1958 classic novel, Things Fall Apart is in development at A24 Studios with Idris Elba attached to star and executive produce. David Oyelowo and Amanda N’Duka will executive produce through Oyelowo’s Yoruba Saxon production company.

October 1st is Botswana Independence Day. Watch A United Kingdom a 2016 biographical romantic drama film directed by Amma Asante, based on the true-life romance of Seretse Khama, heir to the throne of the Bangwato Tribe in Serowe, with his wife Ruth Williams Khama. David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike portray Seretse and Ruth, respectively.

October 4th is Lesotho’s Independence Day. Check out This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection, a 2019 drama film directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese. It was selected as the Lesotho entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards and the first time Lesotho had made a submission in the category. At the 2020 Africa Movie Academy Awards, the film was nominated for seven awards, ultimately winning Best Costume Design, Best Cinematography, Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Best Director.

October 9th is Uganda’s National Independence Day. Watch The Girl in the Yellow Jumper a 2020 Ugandan mystery-thriller produced and directed by Loukman Ali. A critically well-received film, it was also the first Ugandan film to steam on Netflix.

Featured Film

October 1 is a 2014 Nigerian thriller film written by Tunde Babalola, produced and directed by Kunle Afolayan, and starring Sadiq Daba, Kayode Olaiya, and Demola Adedoyin. The film is set in the last months of Colonial Nigeria in 1960. It recounts the fictional story of a police officer (Daba) from Northern Nigeria, investigating a series of killings of young women in a remote village in Western Nigeria just before October 1, 1960 – the date Nigeria gained independence from British colonial rule.

October 1 deals with several themes, including religious and ethnic conflict, politics in Colonial Nigeria, and Nigeria's unification and independence.

Afoloyan stated that he set out to make a film that appealed to both younger and older audiences:

"For the older generation, especially those who were part of independence, they will be able to see themselves in this film. For the younger generation it's a platform – many of them who don't know the story of Nigeria."

The film won several awards, including Best Feature Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor at the 2014 Africa International Film Festival. That same year Netflix acquired the online distribution rights for the film, making it one of the first Nollywood films to be featured on the streamer.

Did You Know?

Under the Hanging Tree (2023) is a supernatural noir Namibian film directed and written by filmmaker Perivi Katjavivi and starring Girley Jazama. The movie explores themes of historical trauma, identity, and cultural displacement, set against the backdrop of Namibia's colonial past. The film became Namibia's first-ever official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature on the occasion of the 96th Academy Awards.

Joe Bullet (1973) starring Ken Gampu, Sol Rachilo, and Abigail Kubeka, was the first South African film to feature an all-black African cast. It was screened at the Eyethu Cinema in Soweto in 1973 before being banned by the apartheid government and never screened again. The 2024 documentary Banned directed by Naledi Bogacwi follows the story of the iconic film and the censorship that took place in Apartheid South Africa.

Subterranea (2024) is the first Kenyan sci-fi television series. Directed by Likarion Wainaina of Supa Modo fame, the series is described by the director as “Big Brother meets Survivor meets Silo” and was released on Showmax in September.

The Egyptian action film Sons of Rizk 3 (2024) starring Ahmed Ezz broke an Egyptian box office record on June 18, 2024 for the highest single day revenue, raking in EGP 23,113,000 (approximately $478,000). The film is the third installment of the popular franchise first launched in 2015 with Sons of Rizk and followed by the sequel, Sons of Rizk 2, which also broke a one-day box office record in 2019.

The short film Bazigaga (2020) by director by Joy Ingabire Moys was the first Rwandan film to be nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) award in 2023.

Birthdays

Biyi Bandele (13 October 1967 – 7 August 2022) was a Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker. He was the author of several novels, beginning with The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyond (1991), as well as writing stage plays, before turning his focus to filmmaking. His directorial debut was in 2013 with Half of a Yellow Sun, based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. His last film was Elesin Oba, The King's Horseman (2022) a Netflix Nigerian historical drama based on Wole Soyinka's novel, Death and the King's Horseman.

Eriq Ebouaney (born 3 October 1967) is a French - Cameroonian actor. Among his African film roles, he is best known for his portrayal as the Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the 2000 film Lumumba and as the lead in Le silence de la forêt (lit. 'The Silence of the Forest/The Forest') a 2003 adaption of the eponymous novel by Étienne Goyémidé and the first feature filmed in the Central African Republic.

Samba Gadjigo (born 12 October 1954), is a Senegalese filmmaker and writer. He is most notable as the director of critically acclaimed 2015 documentary Sembene!, based on the life of Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, often referred to as the father of African cinema.

Noufissa Benchehida (born 23 October 1975) is a Moroccan-French actress. She rose to fame playing the police officer Zineb Hejjami in the TV series police drama El kadia in 2006. Other starring roles followed including Aida (2015), Morocco's entry for the Oscar's Best Foreign Language Film and A la recherche du pouvoir perdu ("In Search of Lost Power"), for which she received Best Actress honors at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou in 2017.

Quote

Maimouna Ndiaye in 2023

"Unlike in the West, cinema is very young [on the continent]. In Africa, we tend to think that there are more pressing matters to deal with than cinema. To the contrary, I think that culture, and in particular cinema, can help to fully resolve societal problems. Cinema is a mirror to the world, a universal language. It’s true that each culture has its own particularities, but this helps to provoke change."
Franco-Senegalese actress and director Maimouna N'Diaye

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Featured Film Score

The Planter's Plantation is a 2022 Cameroonian musical drama film written and directed by Eystein Young Dingha. The film was Cameroon's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2023 Academy Awards. It won multiple awards including the 2023 FESPACO Ousmane Sembène Prize and the top prize at the Ecrans Noirs Festival.

The soundtrack Symphonies of Isambile was nominated for Best Movie Soundtrack at the 2023 Cameroon International Festival Music Awards. It features 17 tracks, blending a variety of musical styles and mixing African rhythms, folk melodies and choral arrangements. According to Dingha:

"The Planter’s Plantation is an allegory of new-colonialism. It is a very bleak story in which we tried to insert things that offer a lighter mood. Then music makes sense, absolutely. Indeed, music will take you on an emotional journey and connect you to Africans. The foundation of our nations was created with music. We have the « Rally song » that we sing to celebrate our nationalism, our countries, our identity. So we used music to represent all this and also to give a brighter side to the movie."

Featured Page to Screen

Rafiki is a 2018 Kenyan drama film directed by Wanuri Kahiu. The film is inspired by Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko's 2007 Caine Prize-winning short story Jambula Tree and tells the story of romance between two young women, Kena and Ziki, amidst family and political pressures around LGBT rights in Kenya. The film's title "Rafiki" (meaning "friend" in Swahili) was chosen, because due to homophobia, people in same-sex relationships often are compelled to introduce their partner as a "friend".

The film had its international premiere in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival; it was the first Kenyan film to be screened at the festival. In explaining her choice of story, Kahiu said:

"My first and foremost concern was to find a love story. This is what I wanted to do. When I came across Jambula Tree—because of the texture and nuances, the profound love that the main characters had for each other—I wanted to tell this story. Even though it’s a hard subject because it’s taboo—two girls falling in love with each other in a country where this is outlawed—it was very important for me to tell a love story because that’s what it is: how true love can triumph above everything."