Filmographies - films at UST by Country: African Countries

"Buba is an auto repairman living in Niger with his brother Mukela, their village is mired in poverty, and given Buba's talent as a football player, they decide to travel to Spain, where they believe Buba might have a shot at playing as a professional. Unable to travel legally into Europe, Buba and Mukela pay a smuggler $1,000 each for passage in the back of a panel truck into Algeria, where the can easily pass into Spain. En route, Buba and Mukela meet Violeta, a teenage girl from Mali who is escaping an arranged marriage with a man she hates. During the trip into Algeria, the three begin to have doubts about the smugglers, and their fears become reality when they're dumped in the desert fourteen kilometers from their destination. Buba, Mukela and Violeta are told that they're only a four hour walk away from their destination, but without navigation tools they finds themselves lost in the sandy plains with no idea of how to make their way to civilization."

Ossei is a strong-willed young man who sets out to rescue his mother when their village is raided. His quest leads him to the stronghold of the dreaded King Adanggaman, an arrogant despot who thrives on the slave trade and uses fierce female warriors to enforce his power. One of these Amazons, herself a former slave, falls in love with Ossei, and they escape to the bush.

Pumzi is set in a post-apocolyptic world in which water scarcity has extinguished life above ground. The film follows one scientist's quest to investigate the possibility of germinating seeds beyond the walls of her repressive subterranean Nairobi culture.
The Abyss boys is set in the slums of a small fishing community on the southern coast of South Africa, the drowning depths of illegal abalone poaching has become a dangerous life that Jimmy, a legendary ex diver, has to escape from. Wanting to save AB, his rebellious young brother from Gonyama, the violent gangster who AB admires, Jimmy devises a plan to give him and AB a new beginning and a new life.
Saint Louis Blues is a musical about a a group of travelers who take a cross-country trip through Senegal in a beat up taxi from Dakar to Saint Louis. Throughout the trip, the group bursts out singing in various cities.
The Tunnel, set in the 1980's in Metabeleland, Zimbabwe, follows a young girl, Elizabeth, who is nicknamed "Rabbit" because of her love of making up stories. When she arrives at a guerrilla camp desperate for help, Elizabeth must tell her greatest story of all, a story about her village, strangers, ghosts, the day her father dug a tunnel to the city and her journey to find him.

Melé, a bar singer, and her unemployed husband Chaka are on the verge of breaking up. In the courtyard of the house they share with other families in Bamako, the capital city of Mali, African civil society representatives have taken proceedings against such international financial institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whom they blame for Africa's woes. As numerous trial witnesses air bracing indictments against the multinational economic machinery that haunts them, life in the courtyard presses forward.

As apartheid comes to a violent end [in South Africa], four fearless photographers--Greg Marinovich ... Kevin Carter ... Ken Oosterbroek ... and João Silva ... --bonded by their friendship and a sense of purpose, risk their lives to capture the bloody struggle and expose the truth.

Daniel Dembélé decides to return to his homeland in Mali and start a local business building solar panels, the first of its kind in the nation. Daniel's goal is to electrify the households of rural communities, 99% of which live without power. The film tells the story of Daniel's journey growing the idea into a viable company, and of the business' impact on Daniel's first customers in the village of Banko. Addressing climate change, poverty, and self-sufficiency, the film demonstrates how a small-scale, local business model can improve jobs, appropriate products, and empower poor people everywhere.

Deals with the dilemma of African troops in the French Army at the end of World War II. The story opens with repatriated Senegalese infantrymen being placed in a transit camp ostensibly for temporary internment before discharge. The real purpose, however, is to reestablish the structures of white oppression disrupted by the war. A dispute over petty regulations soon escalates into a full-scale rebellion, culminating in a massacre.

Clando tells the story of a former computer programmer, Sobgui, whose life has collapsed after his arrest and torture for minor involvement with an anti-government student group. Reduced to driving a clando, or gypsy cab, he eagerly accepts the opportunity to go to Germany to buy some cabs, and to search for Rigoberto, the long-lost, prodigal son of the taxi fleet owner. There he has an affair with a young German human rights activist who convinces him that, 'if you don't change society, society will change you.' He also sees how emigration has reduced Rigoberto to a penniless drunkard by denying him any meaningful social role. Together they return to Cameroon with no clear strategy except that they will wait no longer to take back their country.

This feature film focuses on two young men caught up in the Civil War in Chad. It begins in the 1970s with the story of Koni and Djimi as the central government invades their village and insistes on buying the farmer's millet at below market and then browbeats the villagers into paying taxes to help fight the war. When they resist the government burns the village and massacres the inhabitants. Djimi, wounded, remains behind with the hard-liners, while Koni joins a faction which supports compromise with the government.

"Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers in a monastery in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. When a crew of foreign workers are massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps though the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they leave? Despite the growing menace in their midst, they slowly realize that they have no choice but to stay... come what may."--Container.

Divine Carcasse is an unusual hybrid, a half fictional, half ethnographic film. It is a study in cultural contrast, between a desacralized, materialistic European view of reality and an animist, pre-industrial African one. Belgian director Dominique Loreau has described her film as an encounter with another culture, another way of relating to the world, objects and death, one that challenges our own relationships to the world.

Félicité is a proud, free-willed woman working as a singer in a bar in the Congo's capital Kinshasa. Her life is thrown into turmoil when her fourteen-year-old son gets into a terrible car accident. To raise the money to save him, she sets out on a breakneck race through the streets of electric Kinshasa.

Flame is the story of two close friends whose involvement in the liberation struggle lead to very different outcomes. Florence, impulsive and brave, and Nyasha, scholarly and cautious, are scarcely more than children when they run away from their village to join the liberation forces in 1975. After a harrowing trek to the rebel camps in Mozambique, they adopt their new guerilla identities: Nyasha becomes Liberty, representing her desire for independence, while Florence selects Flame, symbolizing her passion.

Before entering a prestigious American university, Gabriel decides to travel the world for one year, his backpack full of dreams. After ten months on the road, he arrives in Kenya where he is joined by his girlfriend, but discovering Africa as a tourist is not enough for Gabriel. He decides to go deeper, leaving on his own for a journey across countries, new friendships and raw emotions to finally reach Mount Mulanje in Malawi, his final destination. Based on the true story.

Although his leg is paralyzed, 25-year-old Grigris dreams about being a dancer. But when his step-father becomes gravely ill, he winds up taking a job working for a gang of gas smugglers in order to make enough money take care of him. When he befriends Mimi, the two will try to start a new life together. But as bad decisions begin to catch up with them, they'll have to run for their lives. Their pasts, however, are never far behind.

A young man, Abdallah returns to his homeland, a seaside town of Nouadhibou in Mauritania, where his mother lives, before emigrating to Europe. He feels disconnected from his people because he dresses in Western clothes, and he does not speak the language, but he connects in small ways during his stay. Opposed to Abdallah is Khatra, a young boy who is being taught by an elderly electrician, Maata, his trade, while a traditional singer teaches a talented young girl her's. All amidst Abdallah's mother vain urges for him to follow traditional customs while he's in town.

Three brothers fight for Algeria's independence from France after World War II. After losing their family home in Algeria, three brothers are scattered across the globe. Messaoud joins the French army fighting in Indochina; Abdelkader becomes a leader of the Algerian independence movement; Said moves to Paris to make his fortune in the shady clubs and boxing halls of Pigalle. Gradually, their interconnecting destinies reunite them in the French capital, where freedom is a battle to be fought and won.

Karmen Gei is an inmate in a women's prison on notorious Goree Island in Senegal. Karmen uses her dancing and sensual demeanor to seduce Angelique, the prison's warden. Once Angelique falls asleep, Karmen escapes into the Dakar underworld, where she is caught by military policeman Col. Lamine Diop after she insults the nation's military leadership. However, Diop is also seduced by Karmen and once again she escapes and Diop finds himself behind bars. Karmen arranges for Diop's escape, but it is not long before he realizes she is using him, however, by this time he's too deeply addicted to Karmen's passions to turn away.

Based on an important work of African oral literature, the Sundjata epic. When a dj?liba, a master griot or bard, arrives mysteriously at the home of Mabo Keita to teach him "the meaning of his name," the boy and griot are inevitably brought into conflict with his Westernized mother and schoolteacher, who have rejected African tradition. The griot reveals to Mabo the story of his distant ancestor, Sundjata Ke?ta, the 13th century founder of the great Malian trading empire.

In an unspecified country in Africa, after ten years of bloody war, the Nayaks, the President's ethnic group, and the Bonandes, rebels supporting Colonel Theo, come together to celebrate the peace agreement. But the reconciliation festivities are overshadowed by the terrible barbarities that have been committed on both sides.

On the eve of the year 2000, Abderrahmane Sissako, a Mauritanian filmmaker living in France, goes home to visit his father in a small village in Mali. At the post office, he encounters a young woman. A relationship develops, while on the streets of the village, daily life goes on peacefully and unchanged as a new millennium arrives.

Shot on the site of Schweitzer's hospital in Gabon, the film reveals a man blinded to the people around him by his own spiritual self-absorption and arrogance. For Schweitzer to see himself as a stern but loving father, he had to cast Africans as childlike primitives who needed to be protected from the temptations of modernity. He even refused to install electricity and modern hygiene in his hospital wards.

Dramatizes the life of Congolese revolutionary, Patrice Lumumba, who led his country to independence from Belgium in 1960. He served for less than a year as the first elected prime minister, until he was brutally assassinated.

Best friends Ayiva and Abas live hard lives in Burkina Faso and dream of a better future that seems to await them in Europe, as evidenced by the glittering snapshots they've seen on social media of an immigrant's life abroad. Making the dangerous journey through Africa and across the Mediterranean Sea, they end up in the Italian city of Rosarno, only to lead equally hard lives of long working hours, harsh living conditions, and animosity toward them.

Set in a small village in Burkina Faso. Four young girls, facing ritual "purification,” flee to the household of Collé Ardo Gallo Sy, a woman who has managed to shield her own teenage daughter from the traditional mutilation. Collé invokes the custom of moolaadé (sanctuary) to protect the girls, but few in the village are willing to support Collé’s choice. Meanwhile, Collé’s daughter, Amsatou, has fallen in love with Doucouré, the heir to leadership of the village. Even though Doucouré cares for Amsatou, he’s also struggling with what his family considers Amsatou’s “impureness.”

A Congolese king searches for his daughter in Brussels where for a time he loses his royal fetishes, his identity, but finds a friend, a local cabdriver with a secret identity. With his help and a chain of coincidence (it must be destined), Mani Kongo is reunited with his daughter and his regalia and returns to Africa with a circle of friends.

In futuristic Africa 35 years after World War III nature is extinct and humans are living in regimented indoor communities. The curator of a natural history museum receives in the mail a box containing soil into which she plants an old seed. When the seed germinates she breaks out of the indoor community to plant the growing seedling and search for the possibility of life on the outside.

Kapila, a boy, born during a solar eclipse, is condemned to death by the superstitions of his village. However, when the boy is rescued by a childless young woman he attempts to offer love instead of revenge on those who condemned him to death.

Mocktar, a Nigerien peasant, comes looking for work in Essakane, a dusty gold mine in Northeast Burkina Faso, Africa, where he hopes to forget the past that haunts him. In Essakane, he quickly finds out, the gold rush ended twenty years before, and the inhabitants of this wasteland and strange timelessness manage to exist simply from force of habit. The beautiful Coumba, however, is still courageously struggling to raise her daughter after the death of her family. Mocktar will soon be fighting not only to survive, but also to provide a better future for this mother and her child.

In the state of Judea in southern Africa, violence, poverty and sectarianism are endemic. The neighboring Alliance has invaded under the pretense of restoring peace. Bloody street battles accompany the dictatorship's incursion into its weaker satellite. Promises of a transition to open democratic rule are marred by summary executions and brutal massacres. As the civil war reaches new heights, a divine child is born to a lowly couple. As he grows and witnesses the inhumanity of the world he lives in, his angelic guardians offer him an escape to the heavens. He refuses. This is his world and he must try to save it from the work of evil men and from the darkness working through them. As an adult, he travels to the capital, gathering followers along the way from the armed factions of rebels across the land. He demands that his followers give up their arms and confront their corrupt rulers with a vision of non-violent protest and solidarity. Inevitably, he attracts the attention of the Judean tribal leaders who have struck a power-sharing deal with the aloof Governor Pilate. The 'Son of Man' must be brought down and destroyed. This film is a ... retelling of the life of Christ set in contemporary South Africa.

Set in Senegal. Mory and his girlfriend Anta are alienated from their hometown of Dakar and dream of escaping to Pairs. The young couple embark on a life of crime in order to raise money for their trip. They try gambling but lose; they steal the receipts of a charity wrestling match, but take the wrong strongbox. Finally, they manage to rob a rich, predatory man and escape in his roadster. Finally the hope of reaching Paris is in their grasp. However, once they board the ocean liner that will take them to their destination, only one of them will stay on to face the truth of realizing a dream.

Adam, a former swimming champion in his sixties, is a pool attendant at a hotel in Chad. When the hotel gets taken over by new Chinese owners, he is forced to give up his job to his son Abdel, leaving Adam humiliated and resentful. Meanwhile the country is in the throes of a civil war. Rebel forces are attacking the government and the authorities demand the people contribute to the 'war effort' with money or volunteers old enough to fight. Adam is constantly harassed for his contribution, but he is penniless. In a moment of weakness, Adam makes a decision that he will forever regret.

Riva is a small-time operator who has just returned to his hometown of Kinshasa, Congo after a decade away with a major score: a fortune in hijacked gasoline. Wads of cash in hand and out for a good time, Riva is soon entranced by beautiful nightclub denizen Nora, the kept woman of a local gangster. Into the mix comes an Angolan crime lord relentlessly seeking the return of his stolen shipment of fuel.

Souad is a prostitute whose best friend is Kenza, a traffic cop. Kamel is a contract killer who receives his orders via the internet; he is also Souad's favorite customer. When Kenza falls in love with Kamel, the two begin a bizarre courtship doomed by their disparate lines of work and a persistent cybersnooping hacker who stumbles upon the site where Kamel receives his murderous contracts.

In a fictional African country, a rich, self-made businessman and member of the post-colonial ruling elite take on a third wife to show the world his wealth, only to be stricken by a curse resulting in impotency. His efforts at getting cured lead to disastrous yet comical results.

Zizou ... is a naive and sincere optimist whose crush on a beautiful girl leads him to become the unwitting face of a revolution. With two years of university under his belt, but very little common sense, Zizou leaves his Saharan village and finds work in the big city of Tunis, installing satellite dishes alongside a colorful cast of characters. The job takes him to every part of the city, introducing him to residents ranging from supporters of the regime and underground rebels to a ravishing beauty being held captive by the mafia. When Zizou decides to attempt a rescue of his beloved, he gets much more than he bargained for, and a case of mistaken identity lands him in the forefront of a national rebellion.

This film provides an oerview of one hundred years of cultural imperialsim by three European powers, using Cameroon as the basis of a case study. It examines the devastation of traditional African societies, and the present day cultural, intellectual and political conflicts in which colonial powers have been replaced by a dictatorial indigenous regime which still plunders the land and silences the authentic expression of its people.

Looks at the information technology revolution which has become a daily reality in many African countries where the Internet, mobile telephones and digital video cameras are being used with extraordinary creativity. Visits a marabout who explains he no longer replies by letter to questions but uses his mobile phone and email to transmit his advice. Another illustration of the digital revolution in Africa is the rise of internet cafes and cyber teahouses. In some towns in Senegal and the Congo, increasing numbers are connecting to internet using a laptop computer with a mobile phone.

Chronicles Algeria's struggle for democracy since independence from France, in 1962, tracing the rise of fundamentalist groups in the 1980s and 90s in response to the country's authoritarian leadership. The film examines Algeria's descent into a morass of massacres among the Islamic guerrillas, the military and civilians. Algeria's first democratic election since independence went to the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), but when they initiated Islamic reforms, protests erupted. With the FIS positioned to win the 1991 elections, the military circumvented the democratic process and canceled the vote, which brought about a massive revolt with many sent to prison camps that became breeding grounds for terrorism. This film provides an overview of these events through interviews with former Algerian generals, French government officials, Algerian journalists, and Islamic leaders.

Arlit, Deuxieme Paris is a case study in migration and environmental racism set in an uranium mining town in the Sahara desert of Niger. Here European corporations extracted nuclear power and profits, leaving behind illness due to radiation, contamination and unemployment. Arlit flourished during the oil crunch of the early 70s when its uranium mines employed 25,000 workers from around the world in high paying jobs. It has now become a ghost town, a place of transit.

Teno interviews a number of Cameroonian human rights activists who denounce "a political culture of irresponsibility granting those in power complete impunity and no accountability." President Paul Biya has disbanded most civic movements to protect what he calls "Cameroonian style" or "peaceful democracy." For example, in December 1997 Pius Njawe, editor of an opposition news weekly, Le Messenger, was arrested simply for asking if the President had left a football match because of ill health. Njawe was condemned to two years imprisonment in the horrifying, disease-ridden Newbell prison where 150 prisoners are crowded into 30' by 40' cells stacked three deep without a sewage system or adequate food. In prison, Njawe learned there was a fixed schedule of bribes that needed to be paid even to get a trial date; he came to perceive the Ministry of Justice as a giant business enterprise selling freedom. La Tente Dans Les Nuages: Kleptocracy has become an accepted fact of Cameroonian life described by the proverb: "The goat grazes where it is tied." The government controlled formal sector, like its colonial predecessor, is essentially parasitical. An informal sector has emerged parallel to it which increasingly supplies the daily subsistence needs of the people. Irene, for example, works at the Ministry of Education for an unreliable and inadequate salary; she earns the money she needs to eat from selling beignets in the market. She also belongs to a tontine or "credit union" which offers its members a pool of capital to draw on for business ventures. Such clubs, ubiquitous among African market women, help fill the economic and social vacuum left by the decay of traditional society and the unresponsiveness of the formal banking sector.

Chronicle of a rather particular afternoon during which the lives of three people change dramatically: Alex, the husband, goes to his in-laws' to bring home his second wife. Elise, Alex's childhood sweetheart and first wife, accompanies him--as she must, according to tradition. And Josephine, the young bride, leaves her parents to begin a new life.