Portal:African cinema/Selected anniversaries/11

Still of Mbissine Thérèse Diop as Diouana in Black Girl, written and directed by Ousmane Sembene

The International Day of the African Child is celebrated on June 16 to honor the South African school children who participated in the 1976 Soweto Uprising, and to raise awareness on the educational needs of African children.  Check out ''Sarafina! the 1992 musical drama film about the Uprising based on Mbongeni Ngema's 1987 musical of the same name and directed by Darrell Roodt.

A retrospective of films by Senegalese filmmaker, Ousmane Sembène will be screened at the Sydney Film Festival this June. Regarded as the father of African cinema, some of his films that will be screened include Black Girl (1966), Xala (1975) and Moolaade  (2004).

122 (2019) is an Egyptian psychological horror film directed by Yasir Al-Yasiri and written by Salah El Gehiny, set during a "bloody night in a place where we are supposed to feel safe," the film highlights the distressing consequences when Nasr (Ahmed Dawood) and Umnia (Amina Khalil) dial 122, Egypt's equivalent of 911, seeking help. Despite their attempt to find safety, their secrets plunge them into deeper trouble. Originally released in Egyptian theaters in 2019, the film drops on Netflix this June.

The sequel to the 2019 Netflix crime drama film, Òlòtūré titled Òlòtūré:The Journey about a Nigerian journalist who goes undercover to expose the dangerous and brutal underworld of human trafficking, is set to be released on June 28.

Tribeca Film Festival runs from June 5 to 16, 2024, in New York City. African productions set to screen at the festival include Made in Ethiopia by Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan and produced by Tamara Dawit about three women navigating the expansion of the biggest Chinese industrial zone in Ethiopia; Era Oculta: by Carlos Vargas a drama unfolding in Maputuo Mozambique; Searching for Amani, a documentary by Debra Aroko and Nicole Gormley about a young aspiring journalist investigating his father’s murder within one of Kenya’s largest wildlife conservancies; and The Weekend, a drama-thriller by Daniel Emeke Oriahi, and the first independent Nigerian selected to screen at the festival.

Sons of Rizk:The Knockout (2024) is the third installment of the 2015 Egyptian crime drama, Sons of Rizk. Directed by Tarek Alarian and written by Salah El Gehiny, the sequel will be released in Egyptian theaters on June 12.