Africa

Africa

STAND UP MY BEAUTY
STAND UP MY BEAUTY
Nardos, an Azmari singer from Addis Ababa, dreams of telling stories about the lives of ordinary people through her music. In her search of stories for her songs, she meets Gennet, a poet who lives on the streets with her children. As Nardos puts the lives of Ethiopian women, their visions and power at the centre of her creation, we dive deeper and deeper into a rapidly changing country.
MORE THAN I WANT TO REMEMBER
MORE THAN I WANT TO REMEMBER
One night at her home in southeastern Congo, 14-year-old Mugeni awakes to the sounds of bombs. As her family scatters to the surrounding forests to save themselves, Mugeni finds herself completely alone. From there, she sets out on a remarkable solo journey across the globe, determined to reunite with her lost loved ones and lift up the Banyamulenge people.
RED AFRICA
RED AFRICA
A fascinating and insightful documentary, Red Africa relates the history of the influence exerted by the USSR over many African states between 1960 and 1990. Incorporating extraordinary archival footage filmed by Soviet operators, excerpts from official speeches by Soviet and African leaders and audio recording made by Soviet filmmakers during their African expeditions, Red Africa reveals the hidden agenda of the USSR which, under the cloak of generosity, was aspiring to expand its socialist “paradise."
HUNGER WARD
HUNGER WARD
2021 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Short Subject. Filmed inside two of the most active therapeutic feeding centers in conflict-ridden Yemen, Hunger Ward documents two women fighting to thwart the spread of starvation against the backdrop of a forgotten war. With unprecedented access within a sensitive conflict-zone, the documentary reveals the bravery of deeply committed doctors working in the middle of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
MY FATHER THE MOVER
MY FATHER THE MOVER
Winner of Best Short Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival. Alatha’s father calls himself a ‘Mover.’ Using African electronic Gqom beats he motivates kids in Khayelitsha, South Africa to find their superpowers. However, his daughter, Alatha, is still looking for her own powers. In an intimate moment together, this is all about to chang
LIFT LIKE A GIRL
LIFT LIKE A GIRL
With the guidance of her relentless coach, a teen weightlifter emerges from a scrappy training camp in Egypt to compete at the championship level. Filmmaker Mayye Zayed intimately follows Zebiba and her coach in their challenging quest to win the next world championship over the course of four years while the stakes keep getting higher and their bonds deepen. Proving there is nothing that women can't do, the film observes the traditional gender dynamics that come into play with the male-dominated sport of weightlifting. 
THE DIASPORA SUITE
THE DIASPORA SUITE
From the director of The Inheritance, Ephraim Asili's five-part series The Diaspora Suite is a personal and global study of the African diaspora. Made over the course of seven years and shot in Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jamaica, and the United States, this revelatory cycle of five short films collapses time and space to reveal the hidden resonances that connect the black American experience to the greater African diaspora.
NA CHINA
NA CHINA
The implantation of African trade 
in Guangzhou is a recent phenomenon, on which Marie Voignier reports through her interlinking portraits of Jackie, Julie, Shanny who have come to set up their business on site. Amidst the monstrous accumulation of merchandise on the endless markets of the megacity, the film follows these African business women grappling with the globalised Chinese economy.
TRIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS: Films by Akosua Adoma Owusu
TRIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS: Films by Akosua Adoma Owusu
Akosua Adoma Owusu is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker, producer and cinematographer whose award-winning work addresses the collision of identities, and themes such as feminism, queerness and African immigrants interacting in African, white American, and black American culture. This edition presents thirteen of her short films.
KOKA, THE BUTCHER
KOKA, THE BUTCHER
The legendary pigeon races of Cairo are captured on film for the first time in Koka, The Butcher, an award-winning short documentary which introduces viewers to a wondrous and peculiar world where pigeons are trained to compete in sky battles among rival neighborhoods for prizes, cash and bragging rights.
UPPLAND
UPPLAND
In the late 1950s, a large American-Swedish company established a mining operation in the remote highlands of Liberia and built a sprawling, modernist city, a “true America,” for its employees and their families. Today, all that remain are abandoned buildings and empty pools. Exactly what happened involves mythical beasts, the environment, the promise of industrialization, and the last remnants of colonialism.
PERRET IN FRANCE AND ALGERIA
PERRET IN FRANCE AND ALGERIA
Both biography and cultural commentary, Perret tells the story of architectural pioneer Auguste Perret, whose groundbreaking works in two countries are mired in their volatile histories, including Parisian buildings destroyed (and later rebuilt) during WWII. Directed by Heinz Emigholz, this visually stunning documentary presents thirty of Perret's buildings.
SMALL PEOPLE, BIG TREES
SMALL PEOPLE, BIG TREES
Famed anthropologist Louis Sarno discovered the music of the Bayaka pygmies nearly 30 years ago and dedicated his life to their study and preservation. Following Sarno’s death in 2017, the filmmakers travelled to the rain forests of Central Africa to live with the Bayaka and provide a crucial ethnographic portrait of their cultures and traditions under seige from Western influence.
FOOD EVOLUTION
FOOD EVOLUTION
Amidst a polarized debate marked by passion, suspicion and confusion, this fascinating documentary – narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson and directed by Oscar-nominee Scott Hamilton Kennedy – explores the controversy surrounding GMOs and food. Travelling from the cornfields of Iowa to banana farms in Uganda, Food Evolution brings a fresh perspective to one of the most critical issues facing global society today.
THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD
THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD
An exploration of recent social and political upheavals across the Middle East, The Dream of Shahrazad contextualizes these events within a broader historical and cultural legacy by drawing on the famous collection of stories known as “The Arabian Nights."
LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD
LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD
Voiced and executive produced by Tilda Swinton, Letters from Baghdad is a visually rich, beautifully crafted documentary that tells the story of Gertrude Bell, who, more influential than her friend and colleague Lawrence of Arabia, shaped the modern Middle East in ways that still reverberate today.
MIMOSAS
MIMOSAS
Winner of the Critics Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Oliver Laxe’s stunning new film, Mimosas, is a breathtakingly-shot Western that follows a mysterious caravan transporting a dying sheikh into the Moroccan Atlas Mountains.
FRAGMENT 53
FRAGMENT 53
Candid, haunted and often shocking interviews with warlords from Liberia’s First Civil War form the core of this transfixing inquiry into Africa’s modern history and the nature and essence of war itself.